Simple Symbols

I had a professor once who was from China. The class was small. We all sat near the front of the room. And from time to time he shared with us his insights as an engineer working in a foreign language.

Chinese is much better for engineering, he said to us more than once, usually when struggling to write a long formula on the board.

In Chinese there are so many symbols to use, he said with a mischievous grin.

In engineering and mathematics, the symbols you use can be as important as they concepts they represent. The power wielded by a Greek letter alpha can be substantial. No need to write angular acceleration in your equations in each place the term should appear. Just drop in an alpha, and everyone understands.

A single character is more than enough.

Not so in the modern programming world, however. As the fashion of close-to-the-metal C fades to distant memory, new conventions and fads have replaced the no-nonsense sensibilities of the old timers (who would have loved to have an alpha key on their keyboards, I suspect).

So whereas e would have been perfect once upon a time as the name of a mouse click event. Today we are told that we must use event. No, we must use clickEvent. No, we must use mouseClickEvent.

AndBeforeLongAOnceReadableProgramBecomesAMonsterToRead.

10:10:01 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

On Safety in the Modern Economy

Chuq/Teal Sunglasses has some words about the Big Thunder disaster at Disney World:

[Chuq/Safety at Disneyland]:  I'm angry, pissed and disgusted at the Disney bean counters here. They made a conscious decision to reduce the safety factor to save money, in a stupid way by basing their safety factor on data that was obsolete the day they laid off their first 20 year mechanic. And nobody within the park seemed to stop to think about that? To me, that's not stupid, that's criminal.

And whoever made those decisions to cut back maintenance has the blood of two visitors on their hands, and will for the rest of their lives.

Inexcusable. It'll be a cold day in hell before I go back to the park;

Lot's of folks wearing management hats and evidently fewer engineering hats than there used to be.

For another case of management-hat focus, see this discussion of the Challenger disaster.

8:58:54 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []