Subject: Re: [RRG] simplicity

From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:55:39 -0400

On 4/1/08 10:31 PM, Lixia Zhang allegedly wrote:
> C. A. R. Hoare is a British computer scientist, probably best known for 
> the development of Quicksort (or Hoaresort), the world's most widely 
> used sorting algorithm, in 1960. One of his famous quotes is
> 
>   "There are two ways of constructing a software design:
>    make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies,
>    and make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."
> 
> I ran into this in my lecture preparation and thought I'd share with the 
> group.
> 
> Lixia

Here's my contribution:

   Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve
   the solutions, and pass them on.  It is our responsibility to leave
   the people of the future a free hand.  In the impetuous youth of
   humanity, we can make grave errors that will stunt our growth for a
   long time.  This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so
   young and ignorant as we are.  If we suppress all discussion, all
   criticism, proclaiming "This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!"
   we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority,
   confined to the limits of our present imagination.  It has been done
   so many times before.

   It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress
   which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great
   progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the
   value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but
   welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all
   coming generations.

Feynman: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~apetrov/memes/sci/value.html

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