RoR: Forum

Enjoyed the hell out of that.

Mankind models all kinds of things, to varying degrees of success. The key measure of success is, are the models, no matter how arrived at, sufficiently representative of reality that they serve as useful predictive tools, sufficient to plan and control the concept being modeled?

We have a model of (not an understanding of)the effects of gravity; is it sufficiently accurate that we can plan an actual trip to the moon and get men safely there and back?

We have models of how bridges and buildings and ships react to imposed loads; are those models sufficiently accurate that we can plan for and build actual bridges and buildings and ships that will bear up under those imagined loads? Often enough, in spite of the odd Titanic, Hindenburg, or WTC collapse.

We have models of 'the economy.' There is no evidence -- none at all -- that the current -prevailing- models are accurate enough to plan for, control and adjust outcomes in 'the economy.

As best as I can tell, these various competing economic models are largely political arguments; wishful thinking by utopians.

One part of the current prevailing economic model, taught in Econ 101/Samuelson everywhere, is that public debt fueled spending is equivalent in all respects to private debt fueled spending; see the current definition of GDP. Those terms are equal peers, 1 for 1. That is a theory embodied in a model equation. The model equation 'looks' to most folks like mathematics. The theory is a pure assumption, currently being disproved in a massively failing experiment.

regards,
Fred

Post 1

Friday, May 24, 2013 - 6:15pm

I gave it a sanction for what it was and for as far as it went. The content sort of belied the title. The essay was just a declamation against macroeconomics, not a dissection of causality in complex systems.

(See my essay here from a class in Complex Organizations about the FBI as a complex organization. Abstract at link takes you to the full article on Google Docs. It runs about 25 pages. I wrote it for a sociology class in Complex Organizations. Just to say that I have an interest in causality in complex social systems.)

I agree with Joseph's conclusions. That is easy to do. I just look to someone else smarter than I to have better answers than I do, and I could have written that. Nice essay; not deep.

For instance: consider the complex system of sideral time. What is a day? What is an hour? By Rowlands' own reasoning, we have no idea and the entire system of sideral time and calendaric timekeeping should be abandoned. No two days have the same length. So, it is impossible to divide any "day" into 24 "equal" hours. If you do, the hours might be nominally "equal" in themselves but cannot add up to two consequtive days of equal length. Even taking days on opposite sides of the Earth's (supposed) orbit "around" the Sun is known to be subject to precession and nutation. Thus the only true timekeeping must be "micro time" in which each individual person's own personal choice of measures must be the origin of wider abstractions.

Well... maybe not...

But, I do agree 100% with his criticisms of so-called "macro economics." The problem with such criticisms is that in the proper context, such measures are important. See this article from Forbes about "the cost of labor at General Motors." I agree with Joseph 100%, having worked on the shop floor at GM, Ford, and Honda that no two workers with the same machines have the same productivity. The reason why is deep. In his apologia for chemistry, The Same and Not the Same, Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann in said that in your own body, no two hemoglobin molecules are identical. In another college criminology class paper, I examined identical twins: as startling as it is to find two men, separated at birth, who smoke the same brands of cigarettes and married women with the same names, twins do diverge. Even twins raised together are not identical. All persons are individuals.

So, ultimately, no generalization about people can be valid.

Or can it?

Post 2

Friday, May 24, 2013 - 9:36pm

Michael:

For instance: consider the complex system of sideral time. What is a day? What is an hour? By Rowlands' own reasoning, we have no idea and the entire system of sideral time and calendaric timekeeping should be abandoned.

How does that follow? We certainly have a model of sidereal day sufficient to apply with reasonable accuracy and plan. With some irony...the military to this day, even in the age of precise GPS measurements, still uses star sightings and a precise understanding of 'sidereal time' to precisely measure azimuth bearing when it is time to hurl something accurately...because it is far more accurate than GPS based calculations. (GPS is used to extract a measure of universal time, not azimuth...) Doesn't sound like any basis to abandon anything to me.

If macro economics had -any- concept known with similar accuracy as 'sidereal day' there might be hope for it as a science.

As it is, compare with the concept 'unemployment rate' often quoted to a tenth of a percent.

You and I would be hard pressed to find 1 American out of ten thousand who understood the modern term 'unemployment rate' or who would not readily compare it with 'the unemployment rate in 1998' without giving it a second thought.

That is because it has become a political term, not a scientific term.

Post 3

Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 9:01am

Fred, we had an accurate model of sideral time when the Earth was the Center of the Universe.

I agree with Joseph's criticisms. I think, though, that General Motors's own estimates of the value of labor - no matter how fraught with problems - is useful.

Granted, that you and I have a better understanding of the errors inherent in the smoke and mirrors mumbo-jumbo put out by the Department of Numbers, nonetheless, accepting the reality of micro-level reporting - for instance in reports to shareholders - it is possible to aggregate the statistics into meaningful information.

And I accept that as the unstated claim in Rowlands' essay. I think that if he had followed his own assumptions, he would have a Part II of the same length, showing just how to do that, conceptually at least.

The broader problem is in understanding "complex systems." If the system actually exists, then it must be modelable. If it cannot be modeled, then perhaps it is a phantasma, or perhaps we just need better tools.

Post 4

Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 7:48am

Fred,

We have a model of (not an understanding of) the effects of gravity; is it sufficiently accurate that we can plan an actual trip to the moon and get men safely there and back?

We have models of how bridges and buildings and ships react to imposed loads; are those models sufficiently accurate that we can plan for and build actual bridges and buildings and ships that will bear up under those imagined loads?

Before I argue against what you are saying, I want to admit that I am attempting to utilize the wisdom in your words for a project regarding a model of human interaction on planet Earth. In other words, what I am about to say is going to make me look like a hypocrite.

You said we can "model" gravity but not "understand" it. This means we got lucky. We didn't get closer to the truth, we got lucky -- and found a "truth" that "works" in the logical-positivistic and pragmatic sense of "truth." Tomorrow, everything can change. In a galaxy far, far away, everything could be different. Gravity, like everything, is a mystery.

You also said that we can model how it is that a structure would react to imposed loads -- implying that we do not necessarily "understand" such things, but we ... for lack of a better word ... got lucky.

I'm wondering if you are holding out absolute, omniscient (synoptic) knowledge as a standard to judge by. If so, if you think real knowledge is only ever something that has to be free of context, then you will be inclined to withdraw from talk about knowledge and retreat into talk about something which is much safer: models. I'm critical of that strategy.

Is that criticism accurate?

Ed

Post 5

Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 9:22am

Ed:

Gravity does something; we model what it does very accurately. But there isn't anyone who has ever lived on earth, including Einstein, who knew or knows how it does what it does. There are theories. We are all over the effects; we haven't the first clue about the cause(s).

I don't mean anything mystical by that, it is a simple statement of fact about the current state of physics.

Newton made an observation. So did Kepler. But those are about the effects, not the causes. We write down model equations which allow us to model the effects of gravity. We use them in predictive ways. What are the causes of gravity? (Remember the purely hypothetical wonderings about an otherwise un-dectable universal rate of expansion, and gravity as an imagined/unproven consequence of Maxwell's equations applied to a model of a discrete state universe--as in, the universe isn't continuous on the tiniest scale, but changes in discrete steps, implying that both time and space at the tiniest scale is discrete, not continuous? Huh? You mean, you didn't tuck that gem away and cherish it? The point is, that was a total flight of fancy...and that pretty much accurately characterizes -all- of the competing theories of how gravity does what it does; flights of purely imagined fancy.)

But as far as understanding -how- gravity exerts an attractive force at a distance-- one that appears like -like- an electromagnetic force in form, but at the scale of atoms, some forty+ orders of magnitude weaker--even that ratio is difficult to explain; Einstein -did- ponder that ratio, and had a hard time even imagining -- like on a units analysis basis -- how to come up with a factor of over 40 orders of magnitude to relate them in some way. That is a big, big number; how do you throw together things we know about the universe to come up with a number that big? One of Einstein's imaginings related to the apparent age of the universe, in order to come up with that number...implying, perhaps the ratio was different in earlier periods of the universe. How do you and I go back sufficiently far in time to run that experiment? How do we go sufficiently far into the future.. to measure a significance of 1 part in 10^40+? Remember, when we look out at the light from stars, we need to -make assumptions- about what we know about the constancy of things in the universe in order to make claims about the age of what we are looking at, or equivalently, how far away that star is from us 'now.'

We model gravity sufficiently well to put men safely on the Moon and back, or land a device safely on Mars, as long as we don't mix English units with Metric units. That's not debatable, its a done deal.

But why does admitting the fact that we don't presently know how gravity does what it does suddenly admit mysticism into the circus tent? Gravity is a "spooky effect at a distance???" Who is saying that? Let's go kick his ass.

regards,
Fred

Post 6

Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 9:38am

Ed:

[ED]You said we can "model" gravity but not "understand" it.

Model gravity's effects...but not understand it's cause.

Gravity has effects; those effects have a cause or causes. We understand the effects. We don't understand the cause or causes. That is accurate.

regards,
Fred
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 5/26, 9:38am)

Post 7

Sunday, May 26, 2013 - 9:47pm

Fred,

Gravity is a "spooky effect at a distance???" Who is saying that? ...

Alright, alright. So you got me. I might have went just a little too far in my criticism. Sometimes I shoot from the hip. It's more dangerous but, at the same time, more fun to do that. And what is life without fun? You know?

Let's go kick his ass.

Now you're talkin'! Which brings me to one of those 'never-met-you-except-online-but-consider-you-a-friend' moments that you hear about, from time to time: If push came to shove, Brother, I would pledge my life, fortune, and sacred honor to fight at your side.

For instance, in one imagined scenario, I'd walk straight into the IPCC consortium with you to grab the microphone to complain that climatologists ironically don't seem to care enough to directly measure a greenhouse gas effect on earth -- i.e., temp. difference between surface and altitude (where the greenhouse gases coalesce).

We'd probably get physically attacked and, since you no longer take potent anabolic steroids, I'd step up and be your bodyguard. I could hit them over the head with a poster-board displaying decades of invariant satellite temperature recordings at 8-10km altitude. Better yet, we could get Jules to come with us as security. That would keep the audience at bay, while we uproot a spurious-but-much-advertised 98% consensus of professional climatologists. Ah, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

:-)

Ed

p.s., My feelings were mildly hurt when you failed to issue an immediate, intellectual assent to my (actually: to Hans Nieper's) Tachyon Field Theory of Gravitation -- it being such a beautiful and fully coherent theory and all. Instead, I got dissent from you, however polite. That put me in a transient, check-your-premises tail-spin. They say that good friends make the first half of your life hard. So I guess I should say thanks, and that I hope I can return the favor.

p.s.s., Do you know any good software that can be utilized for the evolutionary, agent-based modeling of rational actors? I'm teaching myself Java right now (just started), but I'm at least a year or two away from programming such a model myself. I checked online and there are a few open source programs, but I'm looking for help in deciding.

Post 8

Monday, May 27, 2013 - 8:20am

Ed:

"We'd probably get physically attacked and, since you no longer take potent anabolic steroids, I'd step up and be your bodyguard. I could hit them over the head with a poster-board displaying decades of invariant satellite temperature recordings at 8-10km altitude. Better yet, we could get Jules to come with us as security. That would keep the audience at bay, while we uproot a spurious-but-much-advertised 98% consensus of professional climatologists. Ah, but I don't want to get ahead of myself."

As an old man, I'd appreciate that; we could decide later who was Don Quixote, and who was Panza, but one thing would be for sure: in this batshit crazy tribe, we'd be tilting at windmills, complete with wind, be it man-made CO2 enhanced warming or not.

What do you call an environmentalist at an IPCC convention opening up his own personal can of "lightly carbonated" Red Bull and releasing freshly generated CO2 into the atmosphere?

Impatient, with a slight buzz.

re: Agent based modeling of rational actors... don't know. You've probably seen this, but I'd start here and look for mention of similar application of the toolsets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_agent-based_modeling_software

There's an attempt to feature rate them in this compendium, only one is 'green' across all three headings, but that may not be important to you application.

You using the Eclipse IDE for Java? The current releases are quite usable. (Wasn't always the case, early attempts used to be quite klunky; but IDEs always were a convenience, not a necessity. Pure Java SDK doesn't require any IDE...)

Have you programmed in another non-OOP language prior? There is -always- a lexical/syntactical learning curve to pick up a new programming language, but there is a separate jump with OOP -- a paradigm change. The lexical/syntax details are the easiest to pick up(and generally aren't even taught in many 'programming' courses. Those are RTFM, usually on your own.) The real area of focus has to be on the programming paradigm itself-- that which carries between languages(unlike syntax/lexicon.) That is/was the biggest hurdle with OOP -- not because it is/was complicated, but because the world is/was filled with so much noise about what OOP is/was-- including what follows.

You will -really- need to pick through the poop to pull out the peanuts. But it really does boil down to a handful of concepts useful for characterizing families of behavior. It's inevitably described with terms like "encapsulation" and "polymorphism"... but eventually you boil those down to the use of terms "_has_a" and "_is_a," where every object "_is_a" at least something, and yet through either inheritance or implementing a interface, might also quite logically be a something else in a rational taxonomy. (A 'Mom' is_a 'Woman' is_a 'Person', and the actor/object 'Mom' has the behaviors of 'Mom' and 'Woman' and 'Person' and now I is_a misogynist for saying that..) Yet she might be carrying a 'Purse' which is neither a 'Mom' nor a 'Woman' nor a 'Person'; she has_a 'Purse' and can have access to the properties and actions and behaviours that a 'Purse' can provide, but she _isa 'Mom' and 'WOman' and 'Person' and can also deliver the actions and behaviours and properties that a 'Mom' or 'Woman' or 'Person' can provide.

I recommend you glom onto the _isa _hasa paradigm of looking at OOP code; one of the first things I do when trying to come up to speed on a third party development is to grasp the overall _isa/_hasa model, to understand the local forest. Most OOP environments lend themselves to this kind of analysis; it is one of the big plusses of OOP, it kind of forces complex applications to be discoverable, but you need to be wearing your _isa/_has filters and look for the relationships.

So when defining a 'Woman', the concept 'Person' is extended with the actions and properties that make a 'Person' a 'Woman', and when the concept 'Mom' is defined, is extended with the properties that make a 'Woman' a 'Mom.' But that is just a definition; a particular instance of a 'Mom' is assigned properties that may be unique to that instance of the concept 'Mom' Two instances of a 'Mom' might both be 'is_a' Mom, but they are unique instances. (This raises an interesting question in this type of modeling; to the level that concepts are modeled, how do we define 'equal?' Are instances 'equal' when all of their properties have the same values, such that their behaviours are identical in every application, or are they still unique instances even when their properties are all the same? In the real world (TRW), we never say they are the same instance, even when we say they are 'identical twins' with the same education and job skilss and weight and height and IQ and ... because ultimately we know that at some level they are still unique; so this issue of 'equal' only comes up in imperfect modeling of real things... we are not fully modeling every feature. We can get around this by defining a guaranteed unique identifier that kind of wraps up all the unmodeled properties and behaviours and declares 'this is yet a unique instance, even if all explicit properties are the same. At most it can be equivalent to another instance. In nuts and bolts implementation details, there is still the knowledge that the instance memory address is unique, but that can be an inconstant/fluid means of identity, can change over time in some languages, and so is not a good means of maintaining 'identity.' Anyway, issues like 'identity' are not as trivial as they sound when the implementation details intrude on our models of reality, and need to be understood when we apply the concept 'are equal' in our modeling languages.

In the early 90's, there used to be an early Object Oriented Programming (OOP) language called 'Actor.' It was a precursor to Java, early days of OOP. I'm not saying go look it up, it's just that, with some irony, it was actually called 'Actor.' What persists between an attempt like 'Actor' and java or c-sharp is not any lexicon or syntax, but a kind of modeling paradigm independent of lexicon or syntax. Why I point that out is, although the lexicon and syntax is crucial, it is not central; you should try to focus on the central paradigm, the story of the forest, and then implement the trees using the local syntax/lexicon.

regards,
Fred

Post 9

Monday, May 27, 2013 - 10:36am

ET: I'm wondering if you are holding out absolute, omniscient (synoptic) knowledge as a standard to judge by. If so, if you think real knowledge is only ever something that has to be free of context, then you will be inclined to withdraw from talk about knowledge and retreat into talk about something which is much safer: models. I'm critical of that strategy.

And I thought that an Orthodox Objectivist chrysalis was to be found hereabouts, Will you accuse him of liking Mozart because he refuses to denounce Einstein's collectivist ethics as evidence of the fundamental error in general relativity?

Fred (and I) understand the error in thought that you suggest he is given to, though he is not. This is from my review of textbooks for students in college and university physics classes:
Better treatment appeared in Lea and Burke, Physics: the Nature of Things (1997). ... Also, Lea and Burke gloss over the key problem with doubt: �Physics is an experimental science that prides itself in getting close to reality through laboratory testing of theory.� What is this reality to which we can get close, but never discover? To know that we are closer, not farther, requires some test. That test is reality.

But even in high school physics, we learn to perform experiments by manipulating effects and then creating (accurate, if imprecise) models of those by which we can - as Fred pointed out - hit Luna, Mars, and even Titan. (See these pictures from the European Space Agency, which, I suspect, is a fetid coven of Cartesian rationalists and Kantian idealists held in check by a few Hobbsean realists. ... and yet, they succeed...)

I take a more inclusive view of the historical errors in philosophy, one which does come directly from the summaries provided by Ayn Rand, for instance in her "FNI" essay. She identified the errors in logical positivism, true enough. That said, though, her followers focused on those, and not on the gains, the benefits, the insights, the utilities, the advances.

When performing public demonstrations at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, I pointed out that we all know the drawings in our science books that show the electrons as little balls with minus signs. However, I said, on the hall, we have a sandbox with steel plate, on a steel pin, with a horsehair bow. You sprinkle the sand on the plate, draw the bow across the edge, and create pretty patterns of standing waves. The sand forms patterns and at the nodes it dances. "Electrons are like that, if you want to think of it that way," I said.

Preparing for a project in which I documented accounting procedures for the acquistion of one energy company by another, I got a textbook on electrical engineering for public utlilites -- like from 1927, a nice old book. It said not that we transmit little balls with minus signs, but what the pairs of wires carry a field.

Think of it any way you want, but the closer you are to whatever the truth really is, the better your devices will work. That is the proof. Samuel Morse was born at a time when many scientists thought of electricity as a fluid because it could be held in a Leyden Jar.

Post 10

Monday, May 27, 2013 - 1:32pm

Fred,

Thanks for the response.

What do you call an environmentalist at an IPCC convention opening up his own personal can of "lightly carbonated" Red Bull and releasing freshly generated CO2 into the atmosphere?

Impatient, with a slight buzz.

I was going to say that you call him someone who normally doesn't care a whole heck of a lot about the Law of Identity and Causation -- the kind of thing that would lead you to directly measure something you which you claim is true (though he does care when he is thirsty or tired) -- and that this fact makes it possible to live with performatory contradictions, such as exhaling, and preferring carbonated beverages. I like your answer better, though. While mine may be more true, yours is more poignant.

You using the Eclipse IDE for Java?

I'm using NetBeans IDE 7.3.

Have you programmed in another non-OOP language prior?

To make the picture totally clear to you, I'm a total new-bie to programming. I'm only learning in based on the initial advice of one of my smarter peers. I've only created a couple programs -- and they must be the very first couple of programs created by programming students (e.g., printing a simple line of text, calculating a monthly and total payment from the interest rate and the principle, etc.). I haven't created anything big.

Instead of just using internet articles and videos to teach myself, I utilized the "shotgun approach" and bought 8 random computer books** -- including 5 from the so-called "... for Dummies" series -- which looked like they might someday turn out to be helpful to me.

(A 'Mom' is_a 'Woman' is_a 'Person', and the actor/object 'Mom' has the behaviors of 'Mom' and 'Woman' and 'Person' and now I is_a misogynist for saying that..)

:-)

We can get around this by defining a guaranteed unique identifier that kind of wraps up all the unmodeled properties and behaviours and declares 'this is yet a unique instance, even if all explicit properties are the same.

On that note, Herbert Gintis (a game theorist) recommends writing a complex, adaptive system model in 2 different languages before publishing it (or actually the results of running it). He also recommends having someone re-write your model in a different code -- because quirks ("unmodeled properties and behaviors") are oftentimes accidentally discovered when doing that.

Ed

**From the "for Dummies" series:
DOS
JavaBeans
HTML4
Mobile Device Security (purchased for an unrelated reason)
Networking (purchased for an unrelated reason)

Also, and more importantly, I picked up Liang's textbook (7th ed.) Intro to Java Programming, Perry's Beginning Programming in 24 Hours, and Overland's C++ In Plain English (after discovering that C++ and Java are really very similar code).

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/27, 1:34pm)

Post 11

Monday, May 27, 2013 - 6:59pm

I've heard that NetRexx is a sweet Object Oriented language that is fairly user friendly... same for OORexx (Obj. Oriented Rexx). But that's just what I've heard, since I've been out of programming for a while and my last language was VB.Net.

C++ and Java are case sensitive and jargon intensive and I never did see any reason (other than shear meanness) for doing that.

Post 12

Monday, May 27, 2013 - 9:05pm

Does anyone still use pearl?

Post 13

Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - 1:06am

ED: ... after discovering that C++ and Java are really very similar code).

A sure enough, strong family resemblance is apparent in C/C++/Java/C#.

Keep in mind, and keep them separate, but you are setting off to learn two distinct things and maybe 2.5 things:

1] A programming language (syntax/lexicon/usage)
2] Programming
2.5] OOP Programming

Unless you break that up, taking it all on as one task could be confusing.

Once you have learned 1] for one of the languages in that family, transferring what you've learned to any other language in that family is easy (except that C is a non-OOP subset member of that family, compact and close to the metal. For that reason, unless you are impatient, and many might disagree with this, I would sit down with a copy of K&R "C" and at least read through it, as it is clearly the root for all of the above. It isn't one of those toe killing if you drop it manuals, it is as concise and tight as "C" is, very readable. And the difference between "C" and "C++" illuminates what makes OOP OOP.)

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-2nd-Brian-Kernighan/dp/0131103628

Also, don't be alarmed, but there is no end of the learning curve. There is always something else new to learn, and always will be. Don't let that realization frustrate you in any way. Think of it this way: if reward in learning is like 'torque' then this is for sure a field where the torque curve never goes flat.

But OTOH, you could sit down with K&R and be comfortable writing "C" programs in about two weeks.

If you start with Java(many do), it will be a somewhat steeper on ramp that just plain C, as you will be dealing with OOP right from the beginning. A more leisurely approach would start with C, and once you were comfortable with that, the jump to Java would be rapid(and the OOP would stand out as that which was different/new from your C foundation.

Speaking of new, GC(Garbage collection)languages (Java/C#)also tend to spoil you; you will find it harder to downshift back to malloc/free(C) and new/delete(C++). So why do people downshift to languages without automated memory management crutches? For performance.

To each his own-- each of these have distinct advantages and plusses. I stay away from the religious wars, they are all just tools in a tool box, and you can spend all the time you want acquiring new tools for that tool box, or settle on a favorite, and still be able to build with your toolbox.

Jules asked about Perl, one of the scripting languages. I've used Python more than Perl. But Perl is still endemic in web devo.

MIT offered a programming course based on a classic text(SICP--Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) and for years that used to be based on a version of 'LISP' of all languages. The course is on line here but sadly, 6.001 is no more.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/video-lectures/

One of the reasons for doing that is because it -really- separated the concept of 'learning a programming language' from 'learning programming concepts.' I was a little saddened to learn that they recently -- in the last few years -- caved in to real world constraints and now teach the replacement courses using Python or whatnot, which makes the replacements much more vocational in nature, I've heard. 6.001 lasted for so long precisely because of its focus on the ideas and not the language/flavor of the month.

There is always another language to learn; that's not important, you do that when you need to do that. But all along the way, what you will acquire, that is lasting, that transfers, are the concepts of programming, which is all about modeling to achieve a result.

Sometimes, on a really good day, an intended or desired result.

regards,
Fred

Post 14

Tuesday, May 28, 2013 - 5:39am

"Object-Oriented Programming and Objectivist Epistemology: Parallels and Implications" by Adam Reed. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 4, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 251�84.

Archived here:
http://web.augsburg.edu/~crockett/210/210%20Lab%20Set%204/Reed_OOP_Epistemology.pdf

You can find it on JSTOR now and read it for free, if you register for JSTOR.
The same is true for Academia.edu which asks for your Facebook login.

Post 15

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 10:44am

I would not recommend C++. It has a tangled mess of operators, and the compiler gives terrible suggestions of how to fix a compile error.

Java or C# for desktop/phone applications. C (not C++) is good for embedded. C# is my favorite. There is a free version of the MS Visual Studio IDE.

Post 16

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 12:26pm

Ed,

I couldn't agree more on Dean's recommendation of Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE. It is not only free, but it the finest developing environment I've ever seen - it's awesome! You'll have to use the "Intellisense" to appreciate what a great developing environment can do for you.

And, you aren't limited to C#. You can also use this IDE to code in VB for Windows, VB.Net, C, C++, JavaScript, Vb-script, XML/XSLT, HTML/XHTML, Python, Ruby, and more. (I doubt that all of those different languages are available in the Express version - i.e., the free version, but I think most of them are.)

There are free plugins for automating creation and accessing a database from your code (MS Access or MS SQL).

You can see the Wikipedia description of it here.

When installed, it has a tutorial to get you jump-started and sample projects.

This is a very complex tool - one used by the pros, and neither it nor the languages present you with a lightweight learning curve. And the powerful new OOP languages are nowhere as easy to grasp and use as languages used to be (e.g., like the older VB version 3.0) but in this area of technology there is no going back, and once you are underway, you can't stop either - else the field moves past you and your skills no longer work on next years computers or nets.

One benefit you're likely to acquire from gaining a modicum of skill in this area, is that your mind will somehow assimilate the logic of working with programming Objects and Properties/Methods (modeling) such that you will find your thinking in all areas is crisper, and that you'll find and sort out the relative contexts more accurately.

Have fun!

Post 17

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 6:55pm

Thanks for all the advice, guys.

Ed

Post 18

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 7:25pm

Ed will now fall into a rabbit hole, and we won't hear from him for years. He will come out into the sunlight one day in the future, squinting at the Sun, with pizza stains on his pants, wearing two different sneakers. He will start dreaming in code... which is a really odd experience. He will code in the shower. He will lose track of all time, ironically, surrounded by clocks and timers of all make and manner...

As in... it's 10:24, and I'm still in my office. But I have my xLarge DD with espresso shot, got Raccoon rolling on Spotify, and I'm a happy guy, more or less.

A lot less beer here than I wish and often imagine. It's been that way since Nixon's second term...

Good luck Ed; stay human for as long as it is possible, necessary, or convenient...

...I hope you find being a 'classy' guy as rewarding as you imagined in your quest.

regards,
Fred

Post 19

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 10:37pm