The Computing Scientist's Main Challenge Is Not

Many Mathematicians Derive Part Of Their Self-esteem By Feeling Themselves The Proud Heirs Of A Long Tradition Of Rational Thinking; I Am Afraid They Idealize Their Cultural Ancestors.

When We Had No Computers, We Had No Programming Problem Either. When We Had A Few Computers, We Had A Mild Programming Problem. Confronted With Machines A Million Times As Powerful, We Are Faced With A Gigantic Programming Problem.

When Building Sand Castles On The Beach, We Can Ignore The Waves But Should Watch The Tide.

In The Good Old Days Physicists Repeated Each Other's Experiments, Just To Be Sure. Today They Stick To Fortran, So That They Can Share Each Other's Programs, Bugs Included.

Write A Paper Promising Salvation, Make It A "structured" Something Or A "virtual" Something, Or "abstract," "distributed" Or "higher-order" Or "applicative" And You Can Almost Be Certain Of Having Started A New Cult.