Re: gEDA-user: Power (and other non-graphical) pins

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 16, 2009, at 3:00 PM, der Mouse wrote:

>>>> The generalist will be at a disadvantage when faced with a task
>>>> that pushes state of the art for a specific field.
>> Absolutely not.  The generalist has a huge advantage, because at the
>> cutting edge there is no "specific field", only a problem to be
>> solved.  To truly push the state of the art almost always requires
>> importing ideas from outside any "specific field", because the
>> specialists have mastered *those*, and that's what defines the "state
>> of the art".
>
> But there is a way in which the generalist will be at a disadvantage,
> too: the generalist will not be familiar with the detailed tools
> available to the specialist.  For example, if I (mostly a generalist)
> were to want to write data-blind multiplication code (something  
> that is
> valuable for cryptography) based on Fourier transforms but didn't know
> anything about FFTs, I would be at a substantial disadvantage.

That's why you have to study every day. All your life.

>   If I
> weren't familiar with even the concept of a Fourier transform, I would
> be at a pretty much catastrophic disadvantage.  (As it is, I'm at a
> mild disadvantage bceause I don't know FFTs in detail, but only a mild
> one because I know they exist, have a vague knowledge of them, and  
> know
> how to find details when I care.)

It was enormously advantageous for me to spend 25 years in an office  
across the hall from an MIT reading room that was nominally for  
"astrophysics" but actually had quite an eclectic collection (a bunch  
of stuff on radar, for example). And then there were more extensive  
libraries a little farther away.

That wouldn't be much of an advantage any more, of course: the web is  
far more eclectic. The future belongs to those who master search  
engine predicates. And that specific reading room has been closed and  
turned to office space.

>
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John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




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