Who gets higher salary a Java Programmer or a C++ Programmer?

[Lew]

Many orginazations have attempted to relegate the programmer to "brick
layer" status. The effort has been so phenomenally unsuccessful that
there has been a backlash and now even attempts at reasonable high-level
design are often met with derision.

At no level of software development can one afford not to be an engineer. It
is not "pisser des lignes".

 

[Lew]

Are you sure about this in the US? From what I know, almost every
physician in the US is an AMA member, but I was unaware that it was a
requirement to be a member.

In Maryland, at least, the requirement isn't to be an AMA member but to be
board-certified by the State Board of Medical Examiners. (They also certify
acupuncturists, making acupuncture a full-fledged medical profession in
Maryland.) Part of the certification requirement is to have an appropriate
academic degree.

 

[Tom Anderson]

Which is probably where software engineering is now.


Which is probably where software engineering is now.

I don't think so. I don't think we're even at that stage.

Why not? For all we know, there might be an infinite number of parallel
universes each with their own set of physical laws.

True, but we don't build each bridge in a different one. Universality has
long been considered a fundamental requirement for scientific laws.

tom

 

[Tom Anderson]

So you're in a minority of one. All of the standard definitions
consider it science.

Poppycock. No philosopher of science considers mathematics a science. The
activities of mathematics and science are fundamentally different. Don't
needlessly undermine your own argument by making statements like this.

What physical phenomena are involved in such sciences as economic
science, or psychology, or sociology.

In psychology, it's the array of physical and chemical processes which
underly nerve activity. Neither economics nor sociology is a science.

tom

 

[James Kanze]

Not the one's that I've read. Not the one's my teachers taught me.

These are the things that I was taught and learned.  But
perhaps the opposite is true?  That people are changing the
definitions of things to suit what they perceive as being
their self-interest?  Do you think that's possible?

More likely you didn't correctly understand what you were being
taught. Any "tension" with regards to mathematics stems from
the supposed absence of experiental investigation. Which means
that large branches of math are science. Practically, of
course, if you want to study science, you enrol in the
scientific section of the university, not in the literary
section.

Assuming that it is in fact a science, I think that in
economics at least there is the question of the allocation of
scarce resources (that's from memory, so I might have it
wrong, I think that's what Sowell said,) and these are
physical entities.  There's also the question of the movement
of goods and currency.  Perhaps we could restate those as
fluids problems? In an article at a link I posted else thread,
George Soros used the phrase "financial engineering."

It's less clear to me, perhaps because I don't know enough
about them that psychology and sociology are sciences.  But I
suppose if they are able to measure physical phenomena  and
make predictions about them, the way physics can then they'd
be sciences.  Can they do these?

But I think that we do have to be careful about defining what
a science is.  For example, political pollsters measure things
and often use them to make predictions.  But I'm not sure how
far I'd go in saying that Political Science is a science.
 Maybe I'm wrong about that. Or if it's not now, maybe one day
it will be.

You're missing the point. There's nothing in the definition of
science which says that it has to relate to physical phenomena.
The _American Heritage Dictionary_ gives several meanings,
including "The observation, identification, description,
experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of
phenomena" (nothing about "physical" there; behavioral sciences
are sciences), and "An activity that appears to require study
and method" (which certainly includes mathematics).

Also, AFAICR all of the sciences have some relation to an
engineering discipline, or at least off hand I can't think of
one that doesn't. What engineering disciplines are the three
things you named related to?

That's it. Make up rules as you go along. Engineering and
science tend to subdivide differently.

 

[Tom Anderson]

I think that that's really Ian's point. The Romans didn't have
modern physics, but that didn't mean that they didn't use
scientific principals when they built their bridges.

In that case, we're in violent agreement.

tom

 

[Martin Gregorie]

Then please allow me to ask what an engineer should do if a client wants
an analysis done on the resonant frequency of a bridge, but not any work
done on wind loading,

If the client has asked for an analysis then presumably the bridge
already exists and the project is simply to measure what the client wants
measured or inspected.

If the bridge doesn't exist then its a design project. You'd have to
start by designing a structure that matches or exceeds the bridge
building regulations as well as taking proper account of the physical and
climactic conditions at its site. Doing anything else would give a
meaningless prediction since all these constraints will affect its
resonant frequencies.

Don't forget that all major civil engineering projects are one-off
structures: its very unlikely that anybody has previously built this type
of object on this spot using the specified materials and methods.

would be, let's call it static deck loading, or transient deck loading.

I'm not a civil engineer, but deck loadings would be determined entirely
by traffic predictions and the bridge building regulations in force at
the site. These are design constraints rather that things to be analysed.

Or another fluids problem bridges encounter, water on their supports.
Can an engineer take that work?

Same considerations apply, except that an analysis of the effect of water
on the mid-stream supports is most likely to involve divers making an
inspection after the bridge has been in place long enough to have settled
down and for flow disturbances from the supports to have modified the
river bed.


--

 

[James Kanze]

Many orginazations have attempted to relegate the programmer
to "brick layer" status. The effort has been so phenomenally
unsuccessful that there has been a backlash and now even
attempts at reasonable high-level design are often met with
derision.

It depends on what the application is. Someone writing a pay
program in Cobol isn't very far from the brick layer.

 

[James Kanze]

"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of
speech ..."

It's not a very long amendment, and it's commonly referred to
as "freedom of speech".  Rather hard to miss.

Freedom of speech isn't absolute. Laws against false
advertising exist, and are applied. Laws against assuming a
false identity exist as well.

Entering into a contract is a specific act that is not
"calling oneself" a title.  The First Amendment doesn't cover
that.

As usual, you change the established meaning of words. "Calling
oneself" means "calling oneself". In a contract or elsewhere.

Again, that is action other than speech.

Again, you're trying to redefine "calling oneself".

It's not even actionable if they do.

That depends on how private the circles are.

Only if you engage in certain specific acts for which it's a
requirement. Simple self-description isn't one of them.

Sorry, but telling someone in public you're a doctor when you
don't meet the legal qualifications is illegal.

 

[Martin Gregorie]

Evidently, there's an opinion that the arts can be more or less the
same.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900309/ REVIEWS/3090304/1023

"Most movies are constructed out of bits and pieces of other movies,
like little engines built from cinematic Erector sets."

Thats somewhat of a red herring. All a movie has to do is to be made to a
budget and to attract enough people to see it so the producers make a
profit on the project. Those are the only two constraints unless you also
want to specify that it doesn't get banned by the censors.

An engineering project of any type has to meet these too (cost, profit,
match or exceed regulatory requirements) but in addition it must match a
tight specification covering at a minimum its purpose, interfaces,
performance, scalability, usability and error recovery.

Is there any reason in principle why C++ code can't run on a machine?

That's been done for Algol 68, so in theory you could write a C++
interpreter, but it would probably be complex and slow. Doing this
wouldn't sidestep any of the correctness issues posed by the compiler
and, indeed, would probably add some extras.

I don't think anybody could design and build hardware that could act
directly on a C++ source file (or any other language for that matter) but
in any case doing that would be hideously expensive and you'd end up with
hardware that could only run one particular version of one programming
language. You want Java or COBOL as well? Thats two more chunks of
hardware to be built from the ground up.

 

[Lew]

Sorry, but telling someone in public you're a doctor when you
don't meet the legal qualifications is illegal.

I'm a doctor.

 

[blmblm]

[ snip ]

BTW, Cheney should not have been rubbished for his "unknown unknowns":

Nitpick: Wasn't that Donald Rumsfeld, and the wording was slightly
different .... Or maybe they both said something along those lines.

 

[courpron]

Poppycock. No philosopher of science considers mathematics a science. The
activities of mathematics and science are fundamentally different. Don't
needlessly undermine your own argument by making statements like this.

Not quite.
Epistemology is precisely the area where the debate occurs. So you
can't say that *no* philosopher of science considers mathematics a
science.

Etymologically, mathematics and science both mean knowledge.
Science is originally just that : knowledge, and accessorily a method
to acquire that knowledge.
There's a debate because knowledge in maths is just abstract, doesn't
come from the real world.

However, AFAIK, most scientifics consider that mathematics are a
science, but that may be culturally biased.

[...]

What physical phenomena are involved in such sciences as economic
science, or psychology, or sociology.

In psychology, it's the array of physical and chemical processes which
underly nerve activity. Neither economics nor sociology is a science.

In *psychiatry* yes.
In psychology, well not by default, although there is the neuro-
psychology branch that studies those effects.

Alexandre Courpron.

 

[blmblm]

[ snip ]

It's less clear to me, perhaps because I don't know enough about them
that psychology and sociology are sciences.

Is this where someone should mention the joke(?) about how anything
with "science" in its name isn't one ..... As I heard it, the
is-it-a-joke continues along these lines: "Think about it --
social science? political science? hm, computer science?"

Not taking sides in this argument, mostly lurking and observing
with interest.

[ snip ]

 

[blmblm]

[ snip ]

Possible.

But did you ever notice what a master degree in math is called ?

Oh, I don't know that you can really go by that -- some schools
apparently offer a degree called "Bachelor of Science in Business
Administration". (But maybe I shouldn't be too snide -- perhaps
what's taught in business courses *is* a science in some way.
"Just sayin", maybe.)

 

[Lew]

[ snip ]

Possible.

But did you ever notice what a master degree in math is called ?

Oh, I don't know that you can really go by that -- some schools
apparently offer a degree called "Bachelor of Science in Business
Administration". (But maybe I shouldn't be too snide -- perhaps
what's taught in business courses *is* a science in some way.
"Just sayin", maybe.)

This entire thread is cognate to discussions of how many angels one can invite
to the Head-of-the-Pin Annual Ball before the heavenly fire marshal shuts it down.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Oh, I don't know that you can really go by that -- some schools
apparently offer a degree called "Bachelor of Science in Business
Administration". (But maybe I shouldn't be too snide -- perhaps
what's taught in business courses *is* a science in some way.
"Just sayin", maybe.)

Business Administration is a science. Not a natural science
though. And not engineering either.

Arne

 

[LR]

Also, AFAICR all of the sciences have some relation to an
engineering discipline, or at least off hand I can't think of
one that doesn't. What engineering disciplines are the three
things you named related to?

[snip] Engineering and
science tend to subdivide differently.

I think there's a possibility that you didn't understand what I meant,
and I'm certain that I don't understand what you mean. So could you
please expand on that?

LR

 

[LR]

It depends on what the application is. Someone writing a pay
program in Cobol isn't very far from the brick layer.

Their status doesn't depend on their methodology? It's the application
and language that drive that?

Could you please clarify this?

LR

 

[LR]

Thats somewhat of a red herring.

Yeah, ok, a little bit of one.


[I snipped the part about interpreters because that's not exactly what I
was asking above]

I don't think anybody could design and build hardware that could act
directly on a C++ source file (or any other language for that matter) but
in any case doing that would be hideously expensive and you'd end up with
hardware that could only run one particular version of one programming
language.

I don't think anyone _would_. I was asking if it could be done in
principle. I think that the answer is yes.

LR