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posted by
janrinok
on Saturday November 19 2016, @07:18AM
from the we-are-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants dept.
from the we-are-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants dept.
Jay W. Forrester, an electrical engineer whose insights into both computing and organizations more than 60 years ago gave rise to a field of computer modeling that examines the behavior of things as specific as a corporation and as broad as global growth, died on Wednesday at his home in Concord, Mass. He was 98.
The cause was complications of prostate cancer, his son Nathan said.
Professor Forrester, who grew up on a Nebraska cattle ranch, was working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s when he developed the field of system dynamics modeling to help corporations understand the long-term impact of management policies.
R.I.P., Jay.
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Jay W. Forrester Dies at 98; a Pioneer in Computer Models
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If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Saturday November 19 2016, @09:18PM
Actually, now that I think of it, one of curses of my intellect is that I have to know how things work on the inside. It slows down learning much more esoteric things. I've finally managed, however, to not care how a CPU does its magic. And there are now other things I've surrendered to the aether of the unknown. But when it comes to software, I got to know how things work on the inside. For example, I'm currently wrestling with learning React.JS. It's a pain in the ass, although in principle I know how it works and that helps a lot.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @10:09PM
The worst part of software engineering (call it programming if you prefer) is that you expend so much time and effort to learn the intricacies of something, but that knowledge will be completely worthless in several years at most when that library, framework, or language is abandoned for the newest fad. Based on the short useful lifetime of this knowledge, I would recommend you only learn what you have to to do your job. It's all going to change in a couple of years anyway.