🚀 go-pugleaf

Ross Alexander says:

   [quoting Herman Rubin]
   >To clarify, I meant the specific ability to place the transmission in low gears.

   But the auto transmission knows when to do that for you.  

My experience with manual gears [in Britain] vs automatic gears [America, much
less experience] is ``knows when to do that for you'' is an overstatement.

   Using one allows the operator to concentrate on an appropriate problem
   domain - keeping the vehicle out of the ditch.  

Is this a matter of fact, or of plausible opinion? I'm less aware of changing
gear [in my car my car] than I am of an automatic mishandling gear changes 
- that is to say, it [the former] happens, but not very often.

   Why are you so d*mned eager to second guess
   this mechanism, and divert your attention from the thing that,
   compared to the machinery, you do well (guidance)?  

He then adds

   All these arguements can be moved back into the computer architecture
   discussion with remarkably little rephrasing, I might add.

Well, I'd agree, but perhaps with the opposite sign! I usually disagree with
Herman on architecture; but it seems to me that the car geraing analogy is all
in his favour. Perhaps, if we wish to use this analogy, we should find a part
of the car more suitaed to our purposes ...

One of the Rules for System Design [the authors name I recall with enough
uncertainty to be to embarrassed to attempt to write here] was ``don't hide
power''. Isn't this applicable here? [The Rule doesn't say ``go out of your way
to provide power in the form the use would most like'', of course.]
--

Regards, Kers.      | "You're better off  not dreaming of  the things to come;
Caravan:            | Dreams  are always ending  far too soon."