Xah's Edu Corner: IT Industry Predicament

[Eli Gottlieb]

Xah Lee wrote:
> IT Industry Predicament
> 
> Xah Lee, 200207
> 
> As most of you agree, there are incredible wrongs in software industry.
> Programs crash, injurious tools, uninformed programers, and decrepit
> education system. Over the years of my computing industry experience
> since 1995, i have recently gradually come to realize the cause and
> plan a solution. I wanted to write a cohesive account of my thoughts
> one day. Here's a quick beginning:
> 
> • Most agree that computing industry has lots of problems, including:
> extremely poor software quality, poorly qualified programers, and a
> strayed education system. One final metric is the quality of today's
> software, and consumer's experience with computers.
> 
> • In pretty much free market system of America, we can say that
> software quality (or software related things) being the way it is is
> out of natural selection. In other words: “driven by economy”, or,
> a result that evolved naturally from competition.
> 
> • This naturally evolved result, does not mean it is the “best”
> outcome. Simply put: “outcome” does not mean “desired outcome”.
> Think of it this way: the solutions from genetic algorithms arn't best
> solutions, but best outcome from a given set of criterions and gene
> pool and the coupling environment.

Doing good...

> 
> • We can see now that the state of software or industry is not
> determined by idiotic and simplistic expectations such as quality of
> design or intelligence of programers. How things come to be in society
> do not have simplistic explanations, but sensible understanding is not
> impossible. In a commercial software world, software's popularity or
> trend is determined by the choices consumer makes. How consumer ends up
> purchasing a software has a myriad of factors among them awareness, but
> most responsible being the price/performance ratio, or just price.
> Also, the majority of consumers are morons with respect to evaluating
> software for their own good. This is why, the inept and FREE unixes and
> Perl and C are everywhere. It is also why, the fucking incompetent
> unixes though $free$ but has little place to stand in comparison to a
> charging Microsoft when performance also enters the equation. This also
> explains, the exorbitantly priced fashion-statement Apple
> software/hardware combo are no more populous than those affluent. (not
> because some fucking fashionable chant about how
> good-things-are-always-unpopular fucking fuck chant loved by vain
> above-it geeks.)

I'm sorry, but the $free$ Unixen are actually better operating systems 
than Windoze.  I didn't switch because I thought it was cool or because 
it was free, I switched because Linux crashed less, let me build it how 
I wanted, and had loads of free software that actually worked.  The 
Unixen are the best thing out there right now, but a few of us are 
working on (what we hope is) something better instead of just 
complaining (kvetching) about it.

I agree about Apple, however.

> 
> • The reason fucking languages like C and family mask technically
> superior ones like lisp are in large part due to the unix phenomenon as
> explained above. C + Unix, incompetence + irresponsibility
> bootstrapping each other $freely$. The unix things teach programers to
> unthink. With their greed-based speed-based freely-distributable
> popularity-based iconoclastic irresponsibilities spreading like
> corruption do.

Unix does teach programmers to think in C, that I must admit.  I hope 
that an operating system based on a better language (I know two which 
will prominantly feature Lisp as a systems-programming language, Tin 
Gherdanarra's Lisp OS and my Glider) will become popular enough to solve 
that issue.

> 
> Solution: Understand and spread the word that writing bug-free software
> are not difficult at all, and quality software can be as intuitive as
> extra hands. When good programers understand this and catch on, good
> software with responsible licenses will emerge. Eventually software
> vendors will compete for more responsible software, one's that offer to
> be penalized for every bug or crash or misfeature. In turn, this will
> eliminate all fucking fashions and idiots in the software industry such
> as the Design Patterns and eXtreme Programing or the TIMTOWTDI Perl
> fuck or the OOP fad or the fucking “Universal Modeling Language”
> fuck.

So the solution is to understand and spread the word that the problem is 
unneccessary?  Feh!  Try something that will actually get the code 
monkeys writing better stuff!