[PD-dev] outlet_anything() & threads [OT]

[padawan12]

As a scientist I love the company of my scientist friends. We can
chat to the early morning sun about  electrical  fields  and  the
properties  of quarks. When with the mathematicians we never lose
a moment to stroke our beards over Euler and Riemann. Oh and  the
practical japes I enjoy with my engineer chums in the HE physics
lab. 

But my engineer buddies for all  the  great  things  they've
built never got anything reliable enough to work for long. 
Fortunately the scientists  know how to fix  it,  they're still
waiting  for  some  results  to  come  in but they reckon they've
achieved perfection, at least on  paper.  My  mathematical  mates
have  an  elegant  proof of this discrepancy, something to do 
with the set of all sets that don't include themselves as subsets.
   
Anyway it's not as if we can't all work together. Between us we've
discovered that if offered the choice of a  one or five year 
warranty on a device built to last exactly 13 months, 90% of the
time I will opt for the service contract  thus achieving  the
optimal transfer of money from my pocket to elsewhere.



On Fri, 19 May 2006 13:02:46 +0800
Chris McCormick <chris at mccormick.cx> wrote:

> On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 11:53:40PM -0400, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
> > On Wed, 17 May 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> > 
> > > I disagree.  For me practice is much more important than theory. There
> > > are endless theoretical issues with software, yet it generally works.  
> > > For example, the old theories of software development say that the linux
> > > kernel development model does not work.
> > > Theories should be based on observation.
> > 
> > Theories that aren't based on observation (and/or logical proofs from
> > axioms) aren't theories by any scientific standard. They're called
> > speculations.
> 
> This is true. To me what Hans is talking about is one of the distinctions
> between engineering and science. A scientist must make sure that
> his theory holds together in all ways possible, and must test it in
> reality. An engineer just needs to know what works for a particular
> and specific application. Hans seems more interested in an engineering
> solution than a scientific one.i
> 
> Theory can be extremely useful; two times already I have had an engineer
> try to convince me that they can come up with a generic algorithm to
> solve in polynomial time what I classified as an NP-hard problem. Next
> time I am betting beer on it.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Chris.
> 
> -------------------
> chris at mccormick.cx
> http://mccormick.cx
> 
> _______________________________________________
> PD-dev mailing list
> PD-dev at iem.at
> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-dev