sympy: what's wrong with this picture?

[Mensanator]

On Mar 4, 10:50 am, Lie <Lie.1... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 4, 1:12 pm, Mensanator <mensana... at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Mar 3, 11:58 pm, Erik Max Francis <m... at alcyone.com> wrote:
>
> > > Mensanator wrote:
> > > > While we're on the subject of English, the word "worthless"
> > > > means "has no value". So, a program that doesn't work would
> > > > generally be "worthless". One that not only doesn't work but
> > > > creates side effects that cause other programs to not work
> > > > (which don't have bugs) would be "worse than worthless".
>
> > > All programs have bugs, which means that in some circumstances, they
> > > won't work.  
>
> > And in such circumstances, would be worthless.
>
> > > Therefore, by your reasoning, all programs are worse than
> > > useless.
>
> > That doesn't follow from my reasoning.
>
> > Suppose you downloaded a new calculator program that
> > couldn't add properly. That would be useless to you, right?
>
> > But suppose the program contained a virus that erased
> > your hard drive. That would be "worse than useless", wouldn't it?
>
> > > > I'm not hard to please at all.
>
> > > No, of course not, since logically you must think all software is useless.
>
> > Somehow, I expected better logic from people who call themselves
> > programmers.
>
> Mensanator, for alls sake, you've done right by pointing out the bug
> instead of muttering silently in your room,

I thought that was what's important. Who am I that anyone
cares about my opinions?

> but there is a thing
> called tolerance that you really should learn, it's about tolerating
> and understanding the possibility that other people are humans too and
> humans create mistakes, lots of them in fact and that includes you (if
> you're humans).

Actually, I had resolved to do that and I thought my original
post reflected that. Guess I still have to work at it.

> Along with tolerance should come a better choice of
> wordings,

Apparently.

> instead of saying "it sucks "

I didn't say that.

> "because it does something unexpected and unwanted"

I didn't say that either. "Unexpected and unwanted" is not
necessarily a problem, provided those symptoms are confined
to the program. When they reach out and damage things outside
the program, it's a lot more serious.

> and telling everyone not to use it,

It was intended as a warning not to use it. When I saw the
random number generator wasn't working, guess what the last
cause was that I considered? Do you realize how subtle that
error is, how many times I had to stare at it before realizing
the problem? You can't see it looking at the trees (factorint()
reurns exactly the factors of the composite it was given).

It isn't until you step back and look at the forest you suddenly
realize that the sequence coming from the "randomly" selected
factors is repeating. I was trying to prevent a lot of head
scratching by other end users who may be playing with it.

> you could
> just say "it does something unexpected and unwanted" and say that you
> wanted it fixed.

I don't think that conveys the proper seriousness.

> It's not that you've done anything wrong, but it's
> about your attitude.

As I said, I thought I had toned done the attitude.

OTOH, I'm not sure certain others aren't deliberately
misconstuing what I wrote.