

There are no mom and pop oil rigs in Norway (2002) - bd
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/b3b24fb7512f220f?pli=1

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russell
What the post really says is, if your big business really depends on the
results of days of computation, do your software in the language most
efficient for the developers and throw money at hardware, because the value of
the results is way more than the savings in hardware costs from using the most
efficient language. He is arguing the case of lisp vs FORTRAN in the context
of oil exploration in Norway.

~~~
jcl
He is not arguing purely for throwing money at hardware:

 _A good engineer would balance the tradeoffs and solve the problem within the
existing resource constraints. A theoretical computer scientist would whine
until he got a big enough machine to implement the mathematical solution with
the least amount of fussing about the constraints of the real world._

The post at the start of the Usenet thread asks if any Lisp implementation can
handle inverting a 20,000 by 20,000 matrix. Naggum is arguing that if you
_really_ had that problem, you are probably working in an industry where the
choice of Lisp implementation is irrelevant, because solving the problem is so
lucrative that you could afford to write your own Lisp implementation, if
needed. He's saying that you will throw money at _both_ hardware and
developers to get the job done.

Edit: He also does not compare Fortran and Lisp.

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ced
I do AI. I used to live by McCarthy's quote that "Real AI was probably
possible on the computers from 30 years ago, if only we'd known how to program
them". So I bought my latest computer thinking: I've got 1000 times more
processing power than _necessary_ , so why buy a top-of-the-line computer? Why
care about the mere factor of 2 that I could get for an extra 2000 bucks?

What happens is this: today I had to solve software mini-problem #403 to put
in experiment #14. I coded the naive O(n^2) algorithm, and damn it, it started
paging, and performance crashes. I can't finish the experiment, unless I spend
a few days looking up the right way to do it, O(log(n)); implementation,
debugging, screams. Then I'll throw away the whole thing when I see that it
doesn't work.

 _Ah_ , I think, _if only I'd have a 64 bit Common-Lisp_.

~~~
jderick
Sbcl and Ccl both have 64 bit implementations. I guess you just need a 64 bit
machine?

~~~
ced
Arh, I was hoping this wasn't true... I'm already using SBCL. The point is:
software and hardware constraints limit your flexibility, and Naggum's
argument that "a good engineer works around those constraints" is true if you
have a fixed problem to solve and a lot of time, but it's not when rapid
prototyping, which is what most of us should be doing. He says that no one
should need a 64-bit CL (in 2002); I took his line back to make a crummy
newspapery punchline, which turns out to be false as well.

Stupid penchant for the dramatic.

~~~
omouse
Naggum's argument is that if you're working with a large dataset, it must have
taken you a lot of time/money to obtain it and so you should be able to afford
custom hardware and software to deal with it.

~~~
ced
I say that naive, brute force methods on modest datasets will generate huge
memory and CPU requirements. The solution is either: waste some programmer
time coding a better solution, or get better hardware/operating system.
There's a tradeoff. Modern programming is super wasteful by the standards of
30 years ago. We traded computer ressources for programming convenience.
There's still a lot of _that_ to be done before we have all the convenience we
want.

Computers will be fast enough when I can do arithmetic with Church numerals.

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anamax
I'm disappointed. I hoped that the link went to an article about why there are
no wildcatters in Norway.

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Prrometheus
Is he seriously saying that nobody needs to use large matrices in these days
of internet data? Google uses online implementations of some algorithms
because they can't hold the whole matrices in memory at the same time. Maybe
Google is not the average hobbyist, but hell yeah there are some large data
sets out there for free, exhibit A the World Wide Web.

~~~
wmf
The post is from 2002, and he's saying that if you really need to work with
large data you can afford to write your own tools like Google does.

~~~
ricree
I don't necessarily disagree with him about this, but I do take issue with his
disdain of academic or hobbyist projects.

The internet is increasingly providing free access to very large and very
interesting data sets, and so of course we're seeing more and more people take
advantage of this to do interesting things with this data. And as working with
these sorts of datasets becomes more and more common, it is silly to think
that we should have to reinvent the wheel every time instead of having tools
evolve around their uses.

Moreover, we're in an age where a couple people can successfully take an idea
from a hobby project and turn it into a working business with little more than
time, effort, and knowledge. Given this, I would ask where the line is drawn
between "I need to work with this data" and "what sorts of cool things can I
do with this data". My personal belief is that the line is very fine and
blurry, and that the work of "jerkoff hobbyists" today is likely to lead to
the serious uses of the future.

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gruseom
Better than average Naggum rant. Anybody know what happened to that guy?

~~~
mpk
From his website, <http://www.naggum.no/>

"I am unable to keep my company in operation for health reasons, but it is one
of those things I just cannot give up. Instead of being a commercial
undertaking, it is now only a hobby. Until my health improves, which it might
never do sufficiently, I am generally unable to accept programming projects,
teaching opportunities, or requests to advise students, although I would
really like to see what I can do if you would like my input."

If you're looking for more of his, ahem, observations try his page on
wikiquote : <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum>

~~~
gruseom
I've read the website - I'm wondering what it was that actually happened to
him. He was a character and although acerbic in the extreme made some
interesting points.

