From: Rik van Riel (riel@surriel.com)
Date: Sat Sep 24 2005 - 09:03:23 MDT
On Fri, 23 Sep 2005, p3 wrote:
> Getting to Mars would not only take -much- longer than
> a Singularity (as far as I can see)
In my work as a software engineer, I've become convinced
there really isn't such a thing as software engineering.
That is, in normal engineering we know exactly how the
different components are supposed to fit together, but
when building software we always need to invent ways of
putting things together and cannot often rely on known
methods.
Going to Mars is mostly an engineering problem, creating
the seed AI needed for the Singularity is hard science,
with many untested theories and unanswered questions.
Because of this (and the fact that software development
almost never finishes on schedule) I think it is quite
possible that people will live on Mars before we have
created the Singularity.
-- "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan
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