Date: 14 Feb 2002 19:00:20 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How do basic OS principles continue to improve? Message-ID: <nnr8nntpob.8nn@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <3C6C530E.B391A3FB@mindspring.com> References: <20020213192510.A46224@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <d1vgd1szmm.gd1@localhost.localdomain> <15468.8546.298786.500178@pc-ugarte.research.att.com> <3C6C530E.B391A3FB@mindspring.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes: > Carlos Ugarte wrote: > [ ... compiler stuff ... ] > [ ... "Synthesis"<Massalin>... ] Interesting Wired article about Massalin from 1996 at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffmassalin.html Apparently the quintessential eccentric genius. > I'm often incredibly frustrated at the lack of familiarity > with the literature in fields of endeavor, where people > end up taking years to reinvent a wheel, and then expect > to be lauded for it. ... > I highly recommend it for any technologiust who finds > themselves frustrated by business processes appearing to > be there to stifle their work; in fact, many *are* there > for *precisely* that reason, and the businesses with > them are successful *because* of this, not *in spite of* > it. I suspect that's fairly rare compared to the more natural causes of the problem. I suppose a lot of it comes down to defining what "their work" is. Many technologists define it differently than the people more directly responsible for the work. One SOP I've heard about along those lines is for engineering departments to hire as few PhDs as possible, because they are especially hard for management to see eye-to-eye with on what the work should be. Sadly, they are the one particularly apt to be familiar with the literature pertinent to the department. I worked with varied numerical algorithms for a very large company and often scratched my head about why they so often set people to inventing wheels that had been invented many times before, were being re-invented in rooms down the hall, were found in journals and books and the few on-staff experts, etc. To add insult and injury, they'd refuse to hire mathematicians without an engineering degree. And of course, the few people with any expertise in their field were kept busy preparing presentations for meetings, traveling, etc. I saw it as a problem which could be improved at many levels; in companies (at several levels) and in industries (especially tractable in governemt-related "industries"). The obvious problem is that most workers are busy working to deadlines and haven't the (paid) time to get familiar with outside information. One solution is to have roaming teams of experts, maybe even part time, that are given the time to develop their expertise without having to do grunt work 99% of the time. Of course that would take a strong management hand to have their expertise paid attention to. I think public money would be well spent in improvements in "library science"; in improving the "navigation" of the considerable information that is now available to the few able to do research in a big university technical library. They could pay universities to develop/gather and organize and publish information on a wide variety of subjects for easy public access. They essentially do that now, except for the vital "organize" and "easy" parts. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?nnr8nntpob.8nn>