[Beowulf] Stroustrup regarding multicore

[Perry E. Metzger]

Greg Lindahl <lindahl at pbm.com> writes:
> The funniest posting in this thread was when rgb failed to notce that
> Perry had compared the difficulty of directing physics research to the
> difficulty of writing a program. Some computer programs are hard. Most
> aren't.  So it's a dumb comparison.

If you say so.

Most of the programmers I know go through three stages.

When they're starting out, as they're writing their very first
programs, they think writing software is complicated and that they
don't know nearly enough.

Then, when they've gotten to the point where they have been doing it a
while and are reasonably familiar with a language or two, they think
writing software is straightforward. As with the time where new pilots
know enough to fly reasonably but don't have a lot of hours, this is
when the programmer is the most dangerous to himself and to others.

Finally, if they're really good programmers, after a few years they
begin to think writing good software is monstrously difficult, as
hard as the hardest human endeavors, and that they only understand
enough to muddle through it. This is when they can finally be trusted.

You can tell the incompetent people by the fact that they never get
past stage 2.


Perry