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ScrotzaN

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Well, you insist that programmers are stupid, or can be stupid. And I can't get how that is possible.

 

It depends on your definition of stupid. Just because somebody is good in one thing doesn't mean he is good in others too, and there are also all kind of programmers. Some of them are good ans some of them are just code monkeys.

 

Implication? No... Look you should know how far from anything serious is public static void Main() {.

Don't expect me to know ANYTHING too complex.

 

There are several logical statements like AND, OR XOR and an implication among others.

 

With an implication the truth table looks like this:

A  B |
---------
1  1  | 1
1  0  | 0
0  1  | 1
0  0  | 1

 

So what does this mean?

If your assumption A is wrong and your conclusion B is correct, then the result would be correct, because you came to the correct conclusion using a false assumption. This is basically guessing. You can be right but you don't have to.

To make it a bit more obvious I can show you this statement:

The street is wet, therefore it must have rained.

 

The street is wet is the equivalaent of saying 'My father is not stupid and is a programmer' while the conclusion 'It must have rained' is the equivlaent of you saying 'A programmer cant be stupid.'

 

Now when you think about it you may realize why this is wrong. If it rains, the street will be wet (1 1 = 1)

But I can also say that somebody cleaned his car and therefore the street has become wet and if you consider this, then you can easily say that just because the street is wet, doesn't mean that it HAD to be raining, but it COULD have been.

Anotehr good example is:

A cat is an animal.

A cat has four paws.

Conclusion:

All animals have four paws.

Or another conclusion:

All animals with four paws are cats.

 

You can easily see that this is wrong.

Gerhard

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To sparhawk - well, that I know... I get your point.

 

Only the fact that my father is a programmer and that is why I think programmers can't be stupid is not exactly right. We have a programmer living in the same house with us, but he is pretty dim. You can ask him the same question 5 times before he finaly gets what he was asked about. Imagine what kind of programs he writes. My dad workes with him and says that his programms are as dim. So, what I'm trying to say is - "If a person is stupid, he is not a programmer". Maybe he makes an impression he is, but nothing more... Maybe it's only his job and he treats it like a job and that is all. If a person makes paintings but they are horrible, you won't call him an artist, will you?

 

gah...

 

Personaly, he wrote it out well enough, I don't see a problem.

Edited by Forsaken

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Well, it's an older system. I think the Imperial system evolved, whereas the metric system was created for simplicity..

 

 

The Imperial system of units was actually intentionally designed the way it is for a very good reason: You can do a huge range of multiplications and divisions in Imperial units and get a whole, rational number as the answer, or a simple fraction. Same with the idea of dividing a circle into 360 degrees (that is truly ancient - the Sumerians are thought to be the first to divide the circle into 360 degrees). The idea was that it made the mathematics simpler for semi-literate labourers constructing various buildings.

 

For example, you can divide a foot into thirds and get 4 inches, wheras if you divide a metre into thirds you get 33.3333333 cm.

 

It was actually made to make calculations simpler for simpletons to use.

 

Conversely, the decimal, metric system is a natural evolution resulting from having ten fingers: counting in tens is quite logical.

The Maya used a base 20 numbering system, as they originally used their toes as a numerical aid before their mathematics became more sophisticated. The advantage of the base 20 system is that it is easy to do maths with huge numbers....

 

I of course grew up with and learned to use the metric system, so I am quite comfortable working in cm, mm etc, and I have pocket calculators to do all the maths for me, so I prefer the metric system. But if you dont have a calculator at hand, and your mental arithmetic is ok, the imperial system is actually quite easy to work with.

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Stuff

Well, they altered the definitions of the units in the Imperial system officially, but, as I understand it, it was because that's how they were being used.

 

I also meant it evolved since things like feet and inches have origins with cubits from Mesopotamia. The Egyptians adopted them, then the Greeks, then the Romans, then the Romans took them to Britain. They changed through the ages. The ratios between different units changed all the time.

 

Metric units (Si) were all defined to create international standards. The metre for instance... What is is again? The distance that light travels in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds. (Not quite light speed, and yes, I looked that up). And the second: the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.

 

Since this was a western initiative, the decimal number system was used for simplicity. Of course, the decimal numbering system came from the fact that we have 10 fingers. But the use of the decimal system was still a definition.

 

It's something like, the Imperial system was millenia of tweaking, and the metric system was (not quite) a conference product.

Edited by Northeast
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Decimal system was created by indo-arabic people... I don't think it evolved from the fact that we have 10 fingers. Decimal system is a complex one. Personaly, it gave birth to math.

 

Thi counting system I definately don't want to use is 1,0,1,1,1,0,0,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,0...

 

For computer people - I wonder if someone finds this funny, a whole thread about PC hardware.

http://forum.nival.com/rus/showthread.php?t=27402

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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The number system was created by indians. Arabs developed it from them. Algebra - yes, it was invented by an arab. He first called it "Al-gebr al horezmi" or something close to that.

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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I don't think it evolved from the fact that we have 10 fingers. Decimal system is a complex one.

 

 

It almost certainly did. The VAST majority of counting systems across all of the worlds cultures are derived from people using their fingers to count with - most number systems are base five, base ten (decimal) or base 20 - it is no coincidence that that corresponds to the human pentadactyl limb. The most primitive societies worked out that using fingers could be an aid to simple arithmentic, and that inheritance has stuck with us through most mathematical systems.

 

In fact, if you look at the roots of a lot of words for numbers in a lot of languages, you find that numbers take their names from things to do with fingers. Some languages don't have words for numbers as such, you say for example, six, through a circumlocution describing which fingers you are refering to, and each finger has a specific name.

 

Number systems like the base 12 common in celtic societies, as well as several ancient Mesopotamian peoples, are in the minority. And base twelve is just an extension of using the fingers, by also including the arms as an arithmetic aid. Base 20 numbering systems are typically found in societies where shoes or footwear is uncommon; you don't find base 20 counting systems in societies that wear closed toed shoes.

 

If it were common place for human societies to have base 13 numbering systems, or base 37 number systems, you might have a point...

 

If humans had 8 fingers on each hand I would expect we would all count in hexadecimal...

 

 

The decimal system is no more complex than any other, it is just a matter of familiarity with whatever system you happen to be using.

 

Most people who make maps for games like Unreal or Doom 3 engines would be very familiar in working with base 8 numbers, though they might not be aware of it (8, 16, 32, 64), as this is how 3D game engine typically operate (powers of 2 or multiples of 8, though not using a true base 8 nomenclature)

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Decimal is not complex? Please tell me a simple way to count with roman numbers. V + II + X + XIII Or octal systems... Or binary... I'm talking about math here, not game engines. That is a different topic...

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Maybe it's only his job and he treats it like a job and that is all. If a person makes paintings but they are horrible, you won't call him an artist, will you?

 

That's exactly the kind of person I meant. Problem is technically he is a programer, just like a crap painter is still a painter and thus an artist. Bascially what you mean is that you can apply the word "programmer" to two kind of persons. People who are real programmers, then one that are some kind of artists, and people who are code monkeys, which are doing this for whatever reason, but are applying all the proper rules to make programs, but often don't even understand the beatuy of it.

 

I once had a friend who wanted to learn assembly, so I started to teach him a bit. The only problem was that he never really understood what he did. So he could write programs by applying some rules that he memorized, but he never came up with good algorithms or managed to improve an existing one because for this you must really understand what you do.

 

Personally I think you can even look at some sourcecode or algorithm and almost immediately see if it is a good program or not just by looking at the number of exceptions and special cases it needs to cover in order to make it work. The less there are the better it is, because it means that the programmer really thaught about the problem and generlized it in a good way. Bad programs tend to get a structure of many "If that special case and that special case or that special case ..." I once saw a movie about a famous mathematician (I think it was about Goedel but I'm not sure yet), and he also talked about the bueaty of math, and I think he meant exctly that. And my wife didn't understand what he meant by "beauty" related to math. :)

Gerhard

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How is decimal complex? It isn't particularly complex at all, that is why we use it. Decimal is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc, i.e, the counting system most modern western societies use everyday.

 

I don't know what you are referring to as decimal, but decimal is the most common number system in the world, and in terms of writing it down and doing maths with it, it is very simple. We wouldn't use it if it weren't. We don't use hexadecimal everyday, because it adds a little more complexity in terms of managing sixteen number symbols instead of ten. The Roman counting system is a compound base 5 system - it is written essentially as a base five number system, but is actually decimal in terms of spoken language and longhand written form. The Romans managed to do a lot of very sophisticated maths with their number system, especially considering they had no mathematical concept of zero, and since they used it for everyday trade, taxation and commerce, I highly doubt you could regard it as being overly complex.

 

Game engines typically use octal maths (eg Octree culling), i.e, base 8 numbering systems, so I mentioned it as an example of a non-decimal mathematical system that is not particularly demanding.

If you are talking about maths and numerical systems, of course you must also consider the application of such systems.

 

Hexadecimal maths is very simple for a programmer to use and understand, but for a grocer or a butcher, a decimal or duodecimal system would be more appropriate...

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Decimal is not complex? Please tell me a simple way to count with roman numbers. V + II + X + XIII Or octal systems... Or binary... I'm talking about math here, not game engines. That is a different topic...

 

Considering it from a mathematical point of view, there is no real advantage in terms of complexity over any given numbering system. We learned in school to calculate with any kind of umbering system, and basically it was hard in the beginning because we were not used to it. Since all the usual rules applied, though, after some training it didn't matter that much, with only having decimal system a big advantage because of being so much exposed to it.

 

If you are programming then binary, octal and hexadecimal is much more natural to use than decimal, so it depends on the application wether it is complex or not. In fact, when I'm debugging, using hex is MUCH easier to work with, then converting, i.e. a pointer to dec. :)

Gerhard

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To sparhawk - well, that is what I was talking about.

 

To obscurus - I meant that decimal is complex on how it works, not how it is used. Romans may have used their system, but decimal is much more useful.

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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I don't regard the decimal system as being any more complex to work with than most others. Roman numerals can become unwieldy for certain numbers. for example I can express the decimal number 2000 as MM in Roman numberals, but 2332 is MMCCCXXXII, so it is highly impractical to use for very large, precise numbers.

 

Different numbering systems can become complex when dealing with numbers of a particular size, but the modern decimal system is one of the simplest of all - i can express 2,000,000,000,000,000 as 2*10e15, which saves me writing a lot of zeroes. I can express 2 billion metres as 2 Gm using the SI unit conventions for measuring distance.

 

But the same can be applied to just about any numbering system, though, the smaller the base unit, the more cumbersome the system becomes, eg Binary vs sexigesimal (base 60) for expressing large numbers.

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Each system can be used in different areas differently, but you cannot deny the fact that decimal system is common.

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Each system can be used in different areas differently, but you cannot deny the fact that decimal system is common.

 

 

I didn't deny it at all - I repeatedly made the point that it is almost universally used as the preferred number system! I am not sure you read my post correctly... The decimal system is the most common system around :)

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Which post exactly?

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Read post #63 ("...decimal is the most common number system in the world...") again, as well as post #60. I think you might have missed my point entirely...

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You sounded like the decimal system is useless and is used today only because it's familiar - that's how I understand you...

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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Then you completely and utterly misunderstood me, and I think you must have skimmed over my posts pretty quickly to reach that conclusion.

 

I was pointing out that decimal is the simplest, most logical and practical system for a ten-fingered hominid to use, but I was also pointing out that there are advantages to some of the other systems around in certain circumstances, and that there are reasons for using non-decimal systems. Numbering systems are only as complicated as the things you wish to do with them, and that will vary depending on the features of the numbering system, and complexity in mathematics is something to be avoided, especially for an everyday numbering system used in commerce or engineering, where simplicity reduces the probability of error.

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Well, looks like we were arguing about nothing because I pretty much agree with that... :wacko:

Too late to save us but try to understand

The seas were empty -- there was hunger in the land

We let the madmen write the golden rules

We were just Children of the Moon

We're lost in the middle of a hopeless world

Children, Children of the Moon watch the world go by

Children, Children of the Moon are hiding from the Sun and the Sky

 

© The Alan Parsons Project - Children of the Moon

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