tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2516188730140164076.post1512323962408412435..comments2024-03-22T06:06:19.716-04:00Comments on Devlin's Angle: R.I.P. Mathematics? Maybe.Mathematical Association of Americahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10559021045290192742noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2516188730140164076.post-89111926981967231972013-02-06T23:43:22.124-05:002013-02-06T23:43:22.124-05:00I agree with the point you raise in the Edge artic...I agree with the point you raise in the Edge article, which I would generalize as, "Our technologies can have the effect of painting us into a corner." I think you are saying that the overuse of the technology you cite, machine presentation, is an authentic tragic flaw in the ancient Greek sense.<br /><br />Maybe there will come a science fiction novel where some bar napkin notes trump the Power Point presentation. We can only hope!<br /><br />On a similar note: I wrote software for many years, mostly in the era where you had to wait quite a while to get your results back from a central computer. To use your time well, you needed to read your program carefully to cut down on the number of times you ran it. You really needed to know your code, and there were some shops where everybody knew everybody else's code as well. These days, with a fast computer on every desk, programmers seem much more inclined to crank out their first guess and trial-and-error it into submission. The QA people love having to deal with the resulting fallout and the dismissiveness of the programmers towards them.Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04473326737299320884noreply@blogger.com