[OT] Re: [NCLUG] Linux can do THIS too??!!!

[Evelyn Mitchell]

* On 2002-10-27 17:59 Marcio Luis Teixeira <marciot at holly.colostate.edu> wrote:
> > I read _Lila_ a while ago, and wasn't very impressed with it. Perhaps
> > that's because I was expecting something closer to _Zen and the Art of
> > Motorcycle Maintenance_.
> 
> Yes, indeed, his first book was very good and I think it was a better novel 
> and a more interesting story, but the second one really stood out because it 
> pulled everything together into a coherent (or at least semi-coherent) 
> theory. I can't say that I totally understand his Metaphysics of Quality, but 
> his MoQ seems much more plausible to me than religious explanations of the 
> world, and at least as plausible as scientific theories of the world.

I'd read ZatAoMM before I studied Philosophy, and Lila afterwards. That may
have made quite a bit of difference.

One of the things I learned studying Academic philsophy is that any
Platonic Ideal we believe we're (moving | progressing | evolving ) towards
is just a projection of our beliefs.

Fitness for purpose is always defined within a context. 

I learned a lot about Quality and how we define it studing Ethics,
particularly the school of Virtue Ethics started by Alasdair McIntyre,
based on his reading of Aristotle. 

Here's a good introduction:
  http://www.drury.edu/ess/Reason/Aristotle.html

In business and software, I've found Baldrige's Total Quality to be a good
guide. Look clearly and accurately at the current circumstance. Track
events quantitatively. Remove defects. Remove the causes of defects. 
Cherish bug reports and complaints, they are opportunities for improvement.

Extreme programming takes a lot of the Baldrige philosophy and applies it
to software. 

> > So, what did you like about _Lila_?
> 
> The concepts of dynamic quality and static patterns has a great deal of 
> relevance to a lot of things, including software. Burried in his book are 
> some excellent observations on software and computers (chapter 12 is probably 
> the only one in which he mentions computers directly. In the other parts you 
> have to read in between the lines). I think there are some interesting 
> parallels between what he says and what people are discovering about 
> software. For example, design patterns and software refactoring seem to be 
> the rage in computer science now a days. Viewed from the perspective of MoQ, 
> refactoring can be seen as taking small, incremental movements toward this 
> thing called dynamic Quality. Gradually, as the software evolves, larger 
> static patterns emerge and become evident. I think "software archeology," or, 
> the dissection of existing software to discover what patterns emerged from 
> its construction, will become more and more the norm in computer science.

I wonder. There was a thread on Dave Farber's IP list this week about the
lack of historical perspective of most contemporary academic Computer
Scientists. They'd much rather reinvent a solution (often badly), than to
do research into published solutions from the past. In general, I've found
computer scientists to be quite intellectually lazy when it comes to
knowing the past of their own field. 

I'd be thrilled to see more 'software archeology' going on.

I'll have to re-read _Lila_

> 
> As for the general direction towards which software is heading, consider the 
> following quote from Lila:
> 
>    "It seems clear that no mechanistic pattern exists towards which life is
>     heading, but has the question been taken up of whether life is heading
>     away from mechanistic patterns?" pp. 142
> 
> Substitute "software" for "life" and I think you have a very interesting 
> picture about what could happen to software once it is liberated from the 
> constraints on its freedom.

One of the big threads I see in our culture is away from intellectual
monoculture (starting with the Enlightenment and the Reformation) towards
extreme multi-layered diversity. It is also something I see happening in
business, with many opportunities created to fill needs profitably that are
needs for very tiny groups..

I'd hesitate to say that diversity is different than a mechanistic pattern.
I'd have to have a better definition of 'mechanistic pattern' before I'd
say that. But it is more of an ecology of ideas and ways of life, than the
mono-culture was.

> > This sounds like a good discussion for hacking society.
> 
> If we're gonna do that, then here's the assignment: read ZAMM and Lila, and 
> then write a ten page essay about the relationship of the MoQ to open source 
> software development.

> (now just watch how nobody will show up to the next hacking society ;)

Ha! 

-- 
Regards,                    tummy.com, ltd 
Evelyn Mitchell             Linux Consulting since 1995
efm at tummy.com               Senior System and Network Administrators
                            http://www.tummy.com/