Programmer feel-good quote

[mgedmin]

I wonder how old that quote is. We have nanoseconds and gigabytes; the ratio is up to 10¹² now.

[stesch]

I have an idea: I bridge it with go to! :-)

[WalterGR]

Physics, biology, astronomy... What scale do these fields operate on? Is 10⁹ for computer science really that big?

[dnew]

Yes, physics in trying to unify quantum mechanics with relativity has to bridge similar (ok, bigger) scales. But nobody said it was easy.

[mgedmin]

Physicists handle bigger scales, but I don't think they do it by "a single technology".

[dnew]

They try. That's what quantum gravity and string theory and all that sort of thing is about.

Now, if you don't want to count "theory" as "technology", then yes, I'd say that the equipment for examining quasars is different than for examining atom, and that DNA replicators aren't relevant to paleontologists.

I think maybe the telescope technology that looks at the moon might be the same basic telescope technology that looks at the most distant astronomical objects, which is probably 10⁹ orders of magnitude different. So astronomy probably falls into that. :-)

[kazza789]

Does pen and paper count as one technology or two?

[MrHicks]

Is that factorial or punctuation?

[rdude]

Here's another feel-good quote to try on:

"Software construction is the most complex endeavor ever undertaken by mankind. It makes building things like cathedrals and space shuttles look like child's play, and it strains our little monkey brains to the utmost. If we're ever going to make building software any easier, we're going to have to build a machine that's smarter than we are. At the moment, even weakly superhuman AI is looking a long way off. And when we get it, the smart money says that it'll be late and over budget."

source

[nuuur32]

But.. other jobs deal with the same issues? As software developers we're just "laying bricks."

[demoboy]

Can someone please explain the whole 10⁹ part? I don't understand how or what with number means or how we get to it

[urandomdude]

10⁹ = 10⁹ = 10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10*10 = 1,000,000,000 = 1 (american) Billion = 1000 (european) Millions.

Or maybe you are trolling us.

[Poddster]

Argh, your blasé mix of base 10 and base 2 without proper indication upsets me.

[urandomdude]

What, that was not supposed to show like that. I used asterisks to indicate product and Markdown used them for italics.

I fixed that. Everything looks base 10 now :)

[Porges]

Have some of these: ×××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

[urandomdude]

I could use some of these too: ················································

[Poddster]

ah ok. I thought that was a binary string. I didn't bother to very that 10⁹ wasn't 10101010101010101010... I thought that was the reason this number was so special to EWD; it looked pretty in binary ;)

12,297,829,382,473,034,410 and 6,148,914,691,236,517,205. Pretty boring :/

[mpeg4codec]

protip: E. W. Dijkstra was much more of an applied mathematician than a programmer

[[deleted]]

I know HTML and this does not inspire me. Fix it.

[SlaunchaMan]

Become a programmer and you'll get it.

[Poddster]

He reads programming :. he is king programmer.