From Newsgroup: gnu.emacs.help
On Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 3:50:11 AM UTC-4, Richard Smith wrote:
Hiya Steve, Gene
Totally to be commended.
About computing as I do it.
I'm a welder, basic engineer and metallurgist, so when everythign is
running right with computing I don't otherwise think of it. I've been working long hours welding in the last couple of years.
It seems that we have a few common features of our personal past.
Though I learned how to weld along the way, I've never done it professionally. And to the extent that's I'd want to weld anything as if `permanent', I'd want an CNC angle grinder to UN-weld it.
Since my last welding course I've assembled things NOT out of metal via various ways BECAUSE value disassembly as much as assembly.
As for `applied science' I obtained an AAS in mech tech which required me to so beam calculations and introduced me to metallurgy.
But those degree requirements were posed and met BEFORE CAD software became available for PCs, and the `word processor' was yet to become available and mainstream.
BECAUSE there WERE Computer-Aided Design tools -- called programming languages -- all the tech programs at my college had a `computer apps' course in which one Designed and used their OWN apps, though regrettably in BASIC rather than in a functional language such as APL, Lisp, or scheme ... or even Forth as a thinly veiled programmable version of a stack-based reverse-polish notions calculators marketed by HP and coveted by engineers the world over.
Little did we know it, we were doing IA -- Intelligence Augmentation.
And when ready-made CAD apps and the word processor became available, MOST of my class mates had moved on to become professionals who were de-skilled as IA neophytes do to `the boss' requiring them to use off-the-shelf code -- proprietary stuff with the hood welded shut so thoroughly closed to empirical inquiry that as people obsessed with knowing how-to and how-things-work `under the hood' -- collect their pay checks, and get on with things.
That was in the early 80's
By the mid 80's the CAD manufactures selected `scheme' as the official language for pimping out CAD software ... for all the good it did.
Though AutoCAD had integrated David Betz's Xlisp into AutoCAD as AutoLisp, the Mech Tech students just 5 years behind me were befuddled by it, though they used magical incantations distributed in CAD magazines, without understanding them at more than a superficial level.
The prof in the mech tech program knew BASIC and introduced his students to the joys of AutoCAD, the CADkey, then whatever else appeared on the market as off-the-shelf products.
With never-the-twain-may-meet IA DIY coding of one's OWN algorithms, which our class had done using Statics and Strength of Materials as our domain of application manifesting among those capable of coding said apps in BASIC.
The chasm only widened as the years and decades when by.
Unlike my peers in that Mech Tech program, I went on to study computer science and electrical engineering tech.
When I entered the work world I had a background and know-how in software engineering.
But whose side was I on?
My IA comrades who once coded Statics and Strengths of materials ... but whom passively stood by as those skills were outsourced to CS weenies who didn't know jack shit about the apps they were coding ... or those self-same CS weenies?
I held both with contempt for not occupying the middle ground wherein those who knew their shit about a domain of application did not `code' and those who ended up gainfully employed doing `coding' didn't know jack shit about the domain of application.
Although Ivan Sutherland came up with propagation of constraints as a means of solving for unknowns on par with Simultaneous Equations as taught by the math weenies occupying slots teaching Algebra, THAT whole field -- mathematics -- has become as incalcitrant at the Catholic Priesthood which Marin Luther railed against for using Liturgical Latin.
Fast forward to Present.
Who CARES?
The smartphones are now more capable than the supercomputers of the 80s, and their users routinely fail the requirement to be at least 10% smarter than the equipment the= are operating.
What student of mech tech or welding is going to cultivate an attitude of Intelligence Augmentation sufficient to forgo the temptations of using off-the-shelf apps, even if they don't work and play well together?
Yes, Emacs can be used to edit AutoLisp and visualisp, as well as scheme.
Who is left to CARE?
I can transcribe Algebra notation into elisp, but who cares?
People don't seem concerned with augmenting their personal intelligence via algorithms AT ALL, let alone via lisp.
I'm impressed that you've implementing welding formulae in elisp notation, Richard.
I'm disappointed that more are interested in AI -- as some magical whizzbang tech which will SOME DAY benefit them some day in some way -- than in IA using, say, lisp syntax
Its seems that you took matters into your own hands and came up with Intelligence Augmentation suitable to your purposes!
Cheers!
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