Andrei's list of barriers to D adoption

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 9 June 2016 at 21:54:05 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
> On Thursday, 9 June 2016 at 21:46:28 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Programming is a mix of engineering and craft. There are 
>> people who do research into programming theory, and those are 
>> computer scientists. I'm not one of them. Andrei is.
>
> Unfortunately, the term "software engineer" is a LOT less 
> popular than "computer scientist".

How so? I only hear people use the term "programmer" or 
"informatics".

Computer Science -> pure math / classification / concepts.

Software Engineering ->  process of developing software.

At my uni we had the term "informatics"  which covers both 
comps.sci., software engineering and requirements analysis, human 
factors etc. But it IS possible to be a computer scientist and 
only know math and no actual programming. Not common, but 
possible.

But yes, sometimes people who have not studied compsci, but only 
read stuff on wikipedia engage in debates as if they knew the 
topic and then the distinction matters. There are things you 
never have to explain to a person who knows compsci, but you 
almost always have trouble explaining to people who don't know it 
(but think they do, because they are programmers and have seen 
big-oh notation in documentation).

It is like a car engineering listening to a driver claiming that 
you should pour oil on your breaks if they make noise. Or a 
mathematician having to explain what infinity entails. At some 
point it is easier to just make a distinction between those who 
know the fundamental things about how brakes actually are 
constructed, and those who know how to drive a car.

The core difference as far as debates goes, is that comp sci is 
mostly objective (proofs) and software engineering is highly 
subjective (contextual practice).

So, if the topic is compsci then you usually can prove that the 
other person is wrong in a step-by-step irrefutable fashion. 
Which makes a big difference, actually. People who know compsci 
usually think that is ok, because they like to improve their 
knowledge and are used to getting things wrong (that's how you 
learn). People who don't know compsci usually don't like it 
becuase they are being told that they don't know something they 
like to think they know (but actually don't and probably never 
will).

That's just the truth... ;-)