Subj : Re: do serious programmers have a life?
To   : comp.programming
From : Phlip
Date : Thu Sep 29 2005 02:16 pm

Mabden wrote:

> It's kinda like saying Ford was an inventor. He wasn't. He was a guy
> with money that broke down the problem with building custom cars by
> turning them into a commodity. Smart, yeah, but nothing new. People were
> doing the same thing in plenty of other lines of work, from making
> clothes to canning food to whatever. Suddenly, these guys are geniuses.
>
> I mean, do you think in the 1200's when the maid of some Lord in England
> needed to do laundry she took a shirt from the hamper, wet it, soaped
> it, rinsed it, hung it to dry; then went and got another shirt... etc.?
> The assembly line has been around since women started having kids.
> Applying it to cars wasn't genius, it just happened to be the right time
> for more than a few custom-made cars. Once you could sell 100 cars, you
> get the guys together and say, "Harry, you make me 100 bumpers, and show
> Dick how to attach them to car. Jim, I need 100 engines, take 5 guys and
> make them."

In terms of history written by the conquerors, the commercially successful 
inventors (in the era before blogs) were able to write their own 
biographies. Disney was a hopeful aspirant who rode a train to California 
with an idea of a mouse in his head, and it had nothing to do with the 
dozens of mice already popular in comic strips. Edison thought of the 
lightbulb himself, and it wasn't one of his 20-odd research assistants. 
Ford's idea to assemble cars on a conveyor belt had nothing to do with 
Chicago slaughterhouses disassembling cattle on hook belts. Bill Gates wrote 
a BASIC from scratch in a motel room in Phoenix. Etc.

Edison ruined Tesla because, among other reasons, Tesla actually understood 
power transmission. That's why all the companies called "Edison", today, use 
the AC system Tesla invented and Edison tried to squelch. As usual, this is 
what happens when politics goes against science. Parent Nature cannot be 
fooled.

-- 
  Phlip
  http://www.greencheese.org/ZeekLand  <-- NOT a blog!!!

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