Re: Thinking in perl

[fauria]

Well, i dont really 'think in perl', but i have to recognize that studying computer science and working with them makes me aproach problems in a more logical and structured way.

I think that this science gives you the ability, even without your knowledge, of abstracting all kind of situations and thus solving them in an efficient way.

This has reminded me an article about Jeff Hawkins, CTO of palmOne, who is researching a new theory about how the brain works. This theory has been accepted in the medical community. This is a great fact since Jeff Hawkins is an enginieer whithout a medical degree.

[Nevtlathiel]

I do dream about Perl, and normally come up with fantastic solutions to my real life problems in the dream, only to wake up and find that I can't remember them!

The other day my friend was talking about a "pearl strings" (ie pearl necklaces) and I immediately thought of "perl strings". Clearly evidence that work should give me a week off before the psychologic damage becomes irreversible ;)

[g0n]

Thanks for posting that reference to Jeff Hawkins book, it might be a handy reference for what I'm currently working on. I don't know how 'new' his theory is though - from the write up he seems to be elaborating on ideas that are not uncommon in cognitive modelling.

If you want to see the other side of the argument, try Jerry Fodors 'The mind doesn't work that way: the scope and limits of computational psychology'.

I quite agree about the value of studying science, as a way of developing logical approaches to problems. But I would say that there is value in learning any discipline (or ideally as many as possible - learn everything!). Studying history, particularly the Enlightenment period, gave me a useful insight into the origins of many of the concepts of science that we now take for granted, and the different approach to research provided a different, additional set of tools to use when approaching a problem.

Now, off to Amazon in search of that book.