Re: So it's homework - so what?

[Aighearach]

Of course, students two and three will be the best engineers. Student one will give you all the wrong answers that are in the texts, all the wrong answers when typos are made, etc. Student four will give you lots of wrong answers, on the advice of self-proclaimed experts. (after all, being somebody's "mum" doesn't make this woman any more likely to be able to cook a good steak.) Students two and three each will be valuable engineers, and are the sorts who are more likely to catch other people's mistakes, and verify that their own answers are consistent with nature.

A student who, when presented with the problem:
Using module Foo, write a Perl program that does Bar.
tries in good faith to solve the problem, but also asks for help on PerlMonks when they hit a stumbling block that is outside the intended scope of the problem, will probably make a good programmer. Perl is a very complex language, there is no way for most people to understand everything that is relevant at each stage of the learning. We just have program partly by coincidence for awhile, partly by black magic... as distasteful as that is to many of the Orthodox monks. Then, eventually, we get to where we can actually understand the manual when we read it, and can program intentionally. Until 'perldoc -f map' is chanted, at which point the process begins anew.
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[crazyinsomniac]

You says:

Of course, students two and three will be the best engineers. Student one will give you all the wrong answers that are in the texts, all the wrong answers when typos are made, etc. Student four will give you lots of wrong answers, on the advice of self-proclaimed experts. (after all, being somebody's "mum" doesn't make this woman any more likely to be able to cook a good steak.) Students two and three each will be valuable engineers, and are the sorts who are more likely to catch other people's mistakes, and verify that their own answers are consistent with nature.

I tend to disagree. There are no good engineers in the bunch, but all of them have good qualities (er, behaviours | practices | habits..).

Tachyon said asked "Which student will make the best engineer?", and all but the last are equal. If he askeed his mum why, would be as equal as the rest.

You can't be a good engineer and stick only to one practice. You have to understand the theory, experiment with proper procedure to ensure you understand the theory, and that the theory is sound and applicable....

basically, your reasoning against one and four is wrong. Tyepos my pipmpersnickle. Who's to say "mum" has to be his mother (it's a codename for the best engineer on earth, a true expert).

What if four had a faulty thermometer, and three didn't know how to conduct the experiment properly (which by the way was faulty. It took him waaay too long to cut the meat and take the sample, that all his results are 10 degrees off, due to loss of heat whilst he cut).

Anyway, like I said, a good engineer will have all of the four qualities.

update: oh yeah, when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me, and mostly you, cause you're in charge of the project (and i'm the dumbass who hired you :D)

 
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[Aighearach]

You can't be a good engineer and stick only to one practice.

Well, yeah, I agree with your update... though I can't say I agree with your assumption that these engineers were each using one practice. Actually, that was sortof my point... two and three were both able to combine theoretical and experimental approaches to ensure they had they right answer. Those two know they have the right answer. The first and fourth gave an answer, without having direct knowledge of if it was correct. They simply had a belief, an "assumption," that it was correct.

Is a person really seperate from their practices?
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[crazyinsomniac]

...combine theoretical and experimental approaches to ensure they ...

Not number 3, number 2 yes, but not number 3.

Is a person really seperate from their practices?

Yes, and in color too!!! That's an entirely different discussion. Practices don't always follow beliefs... it's hard to deduce beliefs from practices ... and separate a person from the bunch ... what defines a person?

update: There *is* no mention of the knowledge of theory behind the mojo for the 3rd engineer, he just did the experiment.

 
___crazyinsomniac_______________________________________
Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void
perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H*;,$_}split(q;;,q*H*));print;$q/$q;"