🚀 go-pugleaf

This article is from rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw%mcnc.csnet@csnet-relay.ARPA
 and was received on Mon Aug 11 20:52:27 1986
 

> ihnp4!whuts!6243tes (Terry Sterkel)

>   I have expressed deep reservations on the rest of us (mere journeymen, 
>   novices, and *grade shool* children) if the masters can be so readily 
>   driven to machine mediocrity.

I agree in general but disagree in particular.  I agree that sloppy
thinking is bad, and I agree that electronic composition and
dissemination may spread more of it around.  But I don't think it is
unambiguously true that WP is bad for prose, nor that automated software
development is bad for software development, nor that machine assistance
in general leads to mediocrity.  The examples posed to support this
contention aren't convincing to me because first, much more that just
degree-of-machine-assistance varied between the "good" instances and the
"bad", and moreover I don't think it is definitive that the "good"
instances are really good and the "bad" are really bad.

In fact, I'll drag out the old, tired point one more time.  Each and
every time the technology and technique of thought and dissemination of
ideas has advanced, the new technology or technique has been greeted
with howls of "It'll lead to sloppy/lazy/scatterbraned/insert-your-
perjorative-phrase-here thinking!" After having seen historical evidence
of this in the case of the printing press, logarithms, slide rules,
calculators, and no doubt zillions of others, I am somewhat skeptical of
this latest denouncement.

 --
... the fact that it is possible to push a pea up a mountain with your
nose does not mean that this is a sensible way of getting it there.
                                --- Christopher Strachey
 --
    Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw