[Fedora-packaging] Re: paragraph on shipping static numerical libs

Ralf Corsepius rc040203 at freenet.de
Mon May 28 15:05:24 UTC 2007


On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 16:44 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 04:17:39PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 09:49 -0400, Ed Hill wrote:
> > > On Mon, 28 May 2007 13:46:03 +0200 Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 11:47 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 10:15:01AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > > > > On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 09:44 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > > > > > > On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 09:34:20AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > >  In general scientists do coding 
> > > > > > > just fine but don't want to do more nor even think about it (no 
> > > > > > > packaging, no thoughts on system administration...).
> > > > > > Well, in 90% of all such cases, "their coding" goes into
> > > > > > implementing complex algorithms, while their programs complexity
> > > > > > is not much different from "hello world".
> > > > > 
> > > > > This sounds quite arrogant.
> > > > 
> > > > Feel free to think what you want - These number cruncher guys apps
> > > > condense down to a 
> > > > 
> > > > READ STDIN
> > > > CALL ALGORITHM
> > > > PRINT STDOUT
> > > > 
> > > > Their typical usage:
> > > > 
> > > > ./myapp < inputdata >output
> > > > ... wait <couple of days> ...
> > > > lpr output
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Oh Ralf, you're such a sweetheart!  Bursting with optimism about
> > > all of human-kind!  :-)
> > > 
> > > Yes, some scientists/engineers are dreadful coders and should never be
> > > allowed to admin any systems, not even small one-button toaster ovens.
> > > Some are brilliant coders and/or admins who develop novel algorithms/
> > > approaches and build/manage their own clusters.  Many fall somewhere
> > > between those two extremes.
> > > 
> > > Your "condense down" comments are just silly.  Really... silly...
> > 
> > Thank you, very much - I must have been living on a different planet
> > than you for the last 15 years.
> 
> From the way you describe the scientific community this seems quite
> possible.
I am talking about non-IT/CS scientists: biologists, medics,
mathematicians, physicists, electrical/mechanical/construction
engineers, etc. at all levels, from 1st semester students to professors.

Many of them were brilliant scientists, but more or less illiterate on
programming and system adminstration. Some of them just knew enough to
be able to launch a shell, use an editor and run the scripts/makefiles
and similar others wrote for them.

Of cause there were others, who actively "learned by doing" got deeper
"into the matters".

> > I must have been watching a different kind of scientists, blocking
> > networks and machines with their number crunching jobs over all
> > these years ...
> 
> Well ... the networks and machines are there for doing number crunching
> and not mp3, games, i18n and whatnot.
Right, but these persons skills stemmed from "using PCs" at home and
from courses at school. 

A prototypical situation had been: A math student writing his Diploma
thesis on "Comparison of different algorithms on application xyz using
matlab".

Ralf





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