Why is speed not important?
Edit: How is speed not important?
Edit: How is speed not important?
i can only see speed being an issue in these heavy data type things, for which you should probably be using an APL language (as they are quite exploratory-friendly -- and fast -- for these types of problems)
i've been using Arc for a while and the speed has never been an issue. most of your time developing a program is spent writing it, not watching it run. about the only thing that annoys me is that it currently requires mzscheme
This totally depends on the kind of program you are writing.
I just completed a class on Information Retrieval, the exact same kind of tasks and algorithms in the Collecting Intelligence books. One assignment, I spent most of the time allocated trying to get the program reasonably fast enough in Python to finish in less than a day. If a mistake was not apparent until the program had run for a couple of hours, it totally killed all of the exploratory programming advantages that Python has.
I finally gave up and rewrote the entire thing in Java a day before the assignment was due. I got my algorithm to converge in under 2 hours (had left the Python version running much longer with than this with no converging in sight), and was able to get some decent results to turn in.
Maybe I'm just greedy. I want it all. Speed, exploratory programming, lots of libraries. Common Lisp offers the first two, the last, not so much. Java offers 1 and 3, Python 2 and 3.
My next languages to learn are Scala and/or Clojure. Potentially the speed and libraries of Java, with many of the features that make Common Lisp and Python great at exploratory programming.
I do not see Arc on a path that will give it all 3 of these attributes in the foreseeable future.
Otherwise, we could all go pointing random ideas as false, anyway we haven't to explain why they are false, couldn't we?
Edit: also, maybe you don't like blue after all :)
Example: why is my shirt red? Because I only have red shirts on my house. Why isn't my shirt blue? Please refer to the previous explaination of why it's red, then it follows it can't be at the same time red and blue, etc etc.
And it's great it's like this, because otherwise we could be saying a lot of random predicates are false and no one could argue with us. So I think asking someone "why x is false" isn't illogical, after all if there is a reason to say "x is false", surely there is a way to prove it's false indeed.
Edit: part of the problem with this discussion, of course, is that there is not a fixed meaning for "why". "Why" is a very ambiguous question, it doesn't specify whether we want to know the intention, the proof, the cause, etc. And even, what is a cause? If you are talking about historic events indeed you can't explain why X didn't happen, but from the same pov you couldn't ever explain why Y did happen at all, if you see history as something deterministic & linear. So whether you're right or wrong actually depends on what you see on the word why...
That should be enough to disprove: "there's never an explanation for why something isn't true", and that's the point. I would have preferred a simple explaination of why PG thinks X isn't true than the assertion that such a thing can't be explained (actually I suspect he was being humourous or something like that, obviously he has to have a reason to think like he thinks).
Also, you can always reply: "because I don't want to!", or "because I have other things to do", or "because I don't see a reason to" (it's like asking "why should I..?"), to "why don't you ... X?" :)
First of all, Gatsby contains no animal characters.
The Great Gatsby contains two dogs and a cat. While none are given names, one of the dogs (an Airedale bought by Myrtle Wilson) appears several times and has some identifiable characteristics.
Second, there is no evidence than any of the characters are attracted to animals.
In fact, it contains this scene:
"She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there."
In conclusion, although bestiality is not one of the novel's primary themes, there is evidence that at least one character makes out with a dog at some point.
Please note: the only reason I have time to go and grep -iw gatsby.txt for "dog" is that I'm waiting for the program I'm writing to finish executing. This is why speed is important in exploratory programming.
E.g. it's fairly easy to prove that Boston is not in Oklahoma, but there's no explanation for why it's not.
Unless you are asserting that speed not being important is a fact of exploratory programming, rather than PG's opinion, I see no problem with answering my initial question.
If it makes you feel better though, I can rephrase:
Why is speed not important to you, PG?
I need a bottle opener to get the lid off a bottle. I need it because I need to bend the lid. I don't need a scarf to get the lid off a bottle. Why not? There's no reason you don't need a scarf to get the lid off a bottle; it's just not that useful.
If I may give this one last shot:
Why is slowness acceptable in a language tuned towards exploratory programming, and therefore an unimportant criteria when judging Arc?
"Boston is not in Oklahoma because it's in Massachusetts, and Oklahoma and Massachusetts are two separate states and no city can belong to two states at once (afaik)." Doesn't that sound like an explaination?
Now, an explaination of "why isn't speed important", could be, for example, that it's not important because it doesn't affect your final productivity at all, or at least not in a considerable way compared to some N other factors.
Now, what's the cause of such a difference in the final users' productivity, maybe that can't be answered. But I don't think you were asked about it.
Sorry for wasting your time with this discussion, but I don't really see your point. Maybe I'm wrong after all but until now I don't see how that could be.
Similarly, "why is your shirt not blue" is a silly question, unless there's any reason to suppose that it might be. For instance, if you show up to my "blue shirts only" party wearing a non-blue shirt, it's a perfectly valid question.
Now, as for questions about "Why is X not important for Y?", these can have sensible answers. Why is aerodynamics not important for a lunar lander? Because it never flies through air. Why is peanut butter not important for a lunar lander? Now that is a silly question, because nobody would suppose it might be.
So a question like "Why is speed not important in exploratory programming?" should really have a sensible answer. You could, for instance, say something like "Because in exploratory programming you typically only need to run short tests which don't take a lot of time anyway". To which I'd reply "Oh, I don't know about that, I typically run tests which take quite a long time". To which you could say "Oh, well I'm sure there are some cases where it is, but for most people most of the time it isn't". And I'd say "Yes, I agree with that statement".
The answer you give to that, as you imply in a later paragraph, is really an answer to the question "if a typical person thought aerodynamics was important for a lunar lander, why would they be mistaken?" It's fairly easy to answer that, at least with respect to our peers; we're used to vehicles designed with wind resistance in mind. But this is not the answer to the question of why it's not the case that aerodynamics is necessary for a lunar lander.
Similarly, though there is no answer to the question of why it's not the case that speed is necessary in exploratory programming, I could, if I knew why the OP mistakenly thought it was, have explained why he was wrong. But while I could guess why one of my peers might mistakenly think aerodynamics mattered for a lunar lander, I have no idea why the OP might think speed mattered for exploratory programming.
Sigh. What a huge waste of time this thread has been. I feel like I've just spent an hour trying to convince someone that the Monte Carlo fallacy was false.
;~)
In fact, one could clarify the question a little for the benefit of somebody who couldn't see why anybody would be so confused as to think that aerodynamics had anything to do with the moon, by saying: "Given that aerodynamics are important for many [though not all] vehicles, what properties of a lunar lander distinguishes it from those other vehicles in such a way as to make aerodynamics irrelevant?"
So ahem, bearing that in mind, given that speed is important in many [though not all] programming tasks, what properties distinguish exploratory programming from those other types of programming in such a way as to make speed irrelevant?
It's hard, because it _could_ be. The only way to properly answer is to take a random sample of programmers and show that there is no statistical difference.
This doesn't say anything about weather speed is important or not, of course. But it does give an idea that statistics (or practical experience) might be involved. Just remember, random sample = good, anecdotal evidence = bad.
Anyways, this meta-discussion has gone long enough anyways. I'm having too hard a time following it. Can't we go back arc and exploratory languages, please? :)