Number of languages known [was Re: Python is readable] - somewhat OT

[Nathan Rice]

> Long personal note ahead.
> tl;dr version: Computers are such a large shift for human civilization
> that generally we dont get what that shift is about or towards.

Another option: since *computers* are such a general device, there
isn't just one notion.

> In the long run I expect computing science to transcend its parent
> disciplines, mathematics and logic, by effectively realizing a
> significant part of Leibniz's Dream of providing symbolic calculation
> as an alternative to human reasoning. (Please note the difference
> between "mimicking" and "providing an alternative to": alternatives
> are allowed to be better.)

A thinking machine.  +1.

> Needless to say, this vision of what computing science is about is not
> universally applauded. On the contrary, it has met widespread --and
> sometimes even violent-- opposition from all sorts of directions. I
> mention as examples
>
> (0) the mathematical guild, which would rather continue to believe
> that the Dream of Leibniz is an unrealistic illusion

Mathematics is not a closet guild, it is large and contentious.  Ideas
live and die in mathematics based on their fundamental truth.  If
there is some bold, sweeping statement it *MIGHT* be possible to prove
or disprove, mathematicians will be all over it.  just look at
Fermat's last theorem and the Poincare conjecture if you want proof of
this.

> (1) the business community, which, having been sold to the idea that
> computers would make life easier, is mentally unprepared to accept
> that they only solve the easier problems at the price of creating much
> harder one

Most business people I know secretly love when they can sell a
solution to one problem that creates new problems (and thus
opportunities for new products!).  The business term for this is an
"Upsell" or "Value-add".

> (2) the subculture of the compulsive programmer, whose ethics
> prescribe that one silly idea and a month of frantic coding should
> suffice to make him a life-long millionaire

I love hacker culture, but it has been infected by the idea of
entrepreneurship as a good in and of itself.  Being a creator is a
beautiful thing, go forth and make *art*.  Improve the human
condition.  Make the world a better place.  STFU about venture capital
and stage 2 funding and minimum viable products; that sort of talk is
a sure sign that you haven't created anything of actual value.

> (3) computer engineering, which would rather continue to act as if it
> is all only a matter of higher bit rates and more flops per second

These guys are doing something that I find very uninteresting, but is
absolutely necessary.  Bravo I say.

> (4) the military, who are now totally absorbed in the business of
> using computers to mutate billion-dollar budgets into the illusion of
> automatic safety

Nations will always try and be imperialist.  At least drones and robot
soldiers mean less human suffering.

> (5) all soft sciences for which computing now acts as some sort of
> interdisciplinary haven

Digital humanities (outside of a VERY small set of projects) is a
joke.  Multimedia history presentations (and what not) are the domain
of edutainment companies, not academia.

> (6) the educational business that feels that, if it has to teach
> formal mathematics to CS students, it may as well close its schools.

I feel quite the opposite actually.  At the really top notch computer
science schools, there is a clear mathematical bent (though it is
interdisciplinary).  Places like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU,
Cambridge, etc make a STRONG effort to separate the
mathematical/theory of computation side and engineering side.  At your
average state college, the computer science department is just a
hodgepodge, and you tend to see more graphics, "applied computation"
and embedded/DSP type people.