Jim,
I would go even further. It is definately true that from physics some
scientists learn programming really well, at the best level i'd say.
That's not their job however. From hardware engineering sometimes
even better low level programmers get on the scene.
The point being that a great low level programmers can do many low
level jobs, whereas 99% from the PHD's have no clue where to
even start. Those great low level coders are without exception by
definition of what IQ is, high IQ persons (let's just consider
technical IQ here), not seldom 180+.
Some definitions of what a high technical IQ is as it was not so long
ago written on the wiki pages,
is managing to distinguish tiny details and from those details
managing to understand everything from fundamental
conceptual level (this is my own words, the social dudes have a few
thousand more pages on this most likely).
So from that great low level coder you know he has all that.
180+ is more than what most PHD's have. Additionally most are busy at
conceptual level more than
implementing tiny details into code at cycle level.
Therefore it is easy to deduce from the above lemma's that it is more
likely that the coder can understand
the theories the scientist wants to implement, than that the
scientist will be able to within 10 years implement
the code real low level, provided he has the TIME to learn
programming that well.
Vincent
On Aug 27, 2008, at 6:42 PM, Lux, James P wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Herborn [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:33 AM
To: 'Vincent Diepeveen'; 'Tim Cutts'
Cc: Beowulf@beowulf.org; Lux, James P
Subject: RE: [Beowulf] Stroustrup regarding multicore
Perhaps his judgment isn't "universally" objective (not influenced by
personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts),
but could
very well could be objective (and his version of reality) in his
little part
of the world. Being at a University I've run across more of what
he said
then your particular comments on the subject.
However, that being said I would think that it is usually easier to
teach a
Scientist to code, then a coder the PhD level of the science.
----
I would say that you shouldn't be teaching the Scientist to code.
You should be teaching them to write good requirements documents &
test cases that someone who is skilled at coding can use. That
way, you can leverage the years of tuning experience and down and
dirty knowledge of the computational platform. Giving the
Scientist background information so that they can effectively ask
for things is another story (i.e. make them an intelligent consumer).
And, even if the Scientist does wind up coding, they'll produce
better code if they didn't just do it in a ad-hoc "let's go in and
modify what 30 years of grad students have done and see what
happens".. Not that you're not going to wind up modifying the 30
years of heritage, but at least, you'll have a clearer picture of
what, exactly, you're trying to accomplish and how you'll know that
you got there. That's always nice when you have to justify how you
spent all that money.
{This comment is given, of course, wearing my software development
manager hat. I reserve the right to hack up my own stuff, at my
own risk, of course.}
Jim Lux
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