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| Authored by: Ian Al on Tuesday, October 16 2012 @ 11:50 AM EDT |
It is an answer to all the folk who say that there is a lot more to software
than just mathematics.
I have found that asserting that everything software that feels like it is not
math, is abstract ideas. That statement does not convince those folk.
In future, I shall refer them to your comment.
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Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Maot on Tuesday, October 16 2012 @ 06:19 PM EDT |
I enjoyed your response and thinking about it, thank you. I think we agree :-)
However, to re-iterate, just because something can be seen as maths, doesn't
mean that's the only applicable view. There are multiple, valid viewpoints.
That's why in my opinion software engineering can be fuzzy. Perhaps not the
code-monkey stuff. The fuzzy part is deciding on what view or approach to make.
After all, there are many approaches to solve most problems that work (and
sadly, far more that don't). Then, of those approaches that work, there are some
that can be argued to be more correct than others - depending on view.
The view to be chosen depends on a spectrum of factors, desired performance,
maintainability, time to implement etc. Some of these are things that cannot be
measured easily and have to be estimated. Often we use tacit knowledge, learned
through experience.
That's why I can find code to be beautiful and elegant or as often as not, ugly,
disfigured and abhorrent. There is an art to go along with the science.
So a good engineer is doing far more than just programming and also far more
than just applying logic.
The software is more than just the logic - maybe not from the point of view of
the hardware (and hardware engineer) but it is from the point of view of the
software engineer and from the point of view of the intended audience (the
user).
Just like painters are not chemists and a painting is not just applied
chemistry...
It may be frowned upon to say it here, however; in some respects it's the
sequence, structure and organization (TM Oracle) of the code (not what Oracle
failed to argue, they were talking about interfaces) along with documentation,
abstractions and more that make up the other part. Before the Groklaw commons
lynch me read on :-D
The second half of your comment is interesting, but again, it's trying to tie
the software is maths discussion (which is all very interesting and enjoyable)
into a legal argument. This is a mistake. I know the law tries to do this,
however, as I said I think it's a silly law.
I tried to stay away from the discussion on patent-ability; however, it is my
personal opinion that software patents are not helpful. However, I don't really
believe in the modern world that any patents are helpful. They don't serve their
purpose (or that purpose has now been twisted) and were designed for a culture
and economy we simply don't have.
There again, I'm not much of a fan of IP at all...[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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