Heh.
Posted by paul on Tue, 06/08/2004 - 2:06pm.
It's all good. I kinda figured that that was the case. I just hope that ParU knows that I was not attacking him (you do know that, don't you, ParU?...). But at the same time, I gotta tell ya, I'm mightily sick and tired of the hold-onto-the-past attitude. I got it all through engineering school from the profs, and have run into it plenty of other places as well. I mean, look at the British currency system. What the hell is a shilling or a farthing worth? Or Roman numerals, for that matter- why are they used for dates at the end of the movie, or on buildings? What purpose does it serve? Dump it, I say. Wipe and flush.

There is some stuff that is definitely worth holding onto still, like the old ways of preparing food or woodworking or masonry, but there is much that should be put to rest- and much that should be embraced. The Fundamentals of Engineering exam has a rule that you can't use a programmable calculator on any of it- only one that will do basic math and trig. Now what in the hell is the point of that?!? It's only because the guys in charge of it are old men in their 60s and 70s who used slide rules to do it and consider it cheating to use current technology. WFT?!?

Feh. I've been putting up with this shit for more years than I like to think about. I actually had one guy tell me that we would not be using AutoCAD to draw maps because they had been drawing them by hand for 30 years, and he saw no reason to change. Now, ten years later, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any large firms using Leroy templates and radial arm drafting machines.

It's well we cannot hear the screams
we make in other peoples' dreams.
--Edward Gorey
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