🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2372.Jul2720.44.5791@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>I'm glad you agree with my analogy once again. A competent programmer
>can create an ``adequate'' program by only applying what he was taught,
>without a single spark of creativity---but great programmers aim for
>much more than ``adequate'', just as great musicians do. Engineers, in
>general, don't.
>
>Fine. If there is any art in most engineering fields, it is so deeply
>hidden that most people can accept that an engineer who passes a test is
>competent to actually design something in the real world. This is just
>not true of programming. Or are you so brilliant that you can compose
>an appropriate test? If so, I'd love to see it.
>
Most people, including you it seems, would be wrong! Design of
anything (be it buildings, circuits or programs) is a creative
process. The design didn't exist before, it does now, ergo, I just
created something.  It is one of my pet peeves that people thing
engineering design is not creative. Of course, some engineers are better
designers than others and many (most even) engineers are not actually
employed in design.

I agree that creativity is not taught (or even particularly well
tested for) in any engineering department I have had anything to do
with, but that does not change the fact that good design engineers are
creative people. Just knowing all the formula does not a designer
make. Indeed many people think that the design of software is more
appropriately called "software engineering" rather than "computer
science". I kind of doubt that CS departments teach creativity any
more than engineering departments do, but I see a lot of similarity
in designing a circuit and designing a program. That correspondance
is particularly close when considering digital circuits.

The only case I can see for licencing (of any profession) is where
services are being sold to Joe Unsuspecting Public. Since few, if any,
programmers work like that, I don't see any point in licencing
programmers.

-- 
Ian Dall          I'm not into isms, but hedonism is the most
                  harmless I can think of. -- Phillip Adams
  ACSnet: ian@sibyl.eleceng.ua.oz
internet: ian@sibyl.eleceng.ua.oz.au