If I may recommend a book that is an incredibly readable overview of some
of
the leading edges in computer science research, “The Computation Beauty of
Nature” by Gary William Flake is one of my favorites.
Another interesting thing is Steven Wolfram’s new book, “A New Kind of
Science”. It’s a 1200 page stump composed of 20 years of his research (he
got a PhD from MIT at the age of 20, got the MacArthur Foundation genius
award, wrote Mathematica…) which is basically theorizing that all of
nature and the universe might be reducable to cellular automata. That is,
there is no grand, unifying, horrendously complicated equation that
returns
‘42’ but rather a beautiful interaction by many types of simple automata.
(note - I haven’t read this one > 
I know this is not related to software directly but I like the fact that
computers are opening up the wonders of the universe for us.
Kris
“Robert Krten” <> nospam88@parse.com> > wrote in message
news:ad0his$p52$> 1@inn.qnx.com> …
Remember the Simpson’s episode with Homer on top of Moe’s bar with his
band?
Limo pulls up, George Harrison pokes his head out and says, “It’s been
done”.
Well, that’s kind of the way I feel about the current state of affairs
in
the software field.
Remember when an “operating system” was something to fear and hold in
awe?
How did those guys do it? What made it work? How did their memory
system
work? Nowadays, it’s “been done”. POSIX says “this is the set of
functions
you will have”. QSSL, to their credit, has done an excellent job in
implementing
the POSIX specs, leaving very little to the imagination. Sure, QNX 4
and
Neutrino
are really “clean” implementations of operating systems, taking tons of
talent
and so on to do, but… “it’s been done”.
The separation between filesystem, TCP/IP stack, device drivers, and
core
OS
is again so well done that it leaves little to “wonder” at.
Remember compilers? This was something that was almost “godlike” in its
ability to “understand” C code and generate low level machine code.
Nowadays, “it’s been done”.
There are tons of other examples.
The database guys haven’t progressed – a database is still not some
kind
of
wonderful, futuristic AI-like replacement for memory, it’s just a set of
indexes
into files. Wheee… “it’s been done”.
The point of this tirade (and I did warn you-all it would be one > 
> )
is that I’m really kinda bored – what’s going to be
the “next” exciting thing in the software field that you can hold in
awe
and terror (like OS’s and compilers used to be)?
About the only thing that jumps out at me is the field of AI – and this
is
because of two things: my own general ignorance of the state-of-the-art
in
the field, and my perception that it’s all just the same old crap – do
they
still use LISP? Are they any closer to making a truly artificial
intelligence?
I don’t need something that looks and acts like a human – if it is
truly
“artificial” it could have its own way of looking at the world and
interacting
with it – that’s fine. It doesn’t need to love, or express emotion, or
be
able to compose music (necessarily). It just needs to be able to do
something
that shows its intelligence.
Anyway, I’m done. Anyone have any ideas on what would be “fun”? (apart
from
restoring old computers, of course > > )
Cheers,
-RK
Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices +1 613 599 8316.
Realtime Systems Architecture, Books, Video-based and Instructor-led
Training and Consulting at > www.parse.com> .
Email my initials at parse dot com.