[Sigia-l] Programming IAs was: Little things an IA MUST know/do

[Jon Hanna]

> But, how is IA more scientific than programming?
[snip]
> Maybe you are thinking of the research that I would do being part
> of a more
> scientific method...

Exactly. Most programming is no more computer science than most
blacksmithery is metallurgy, though in both cases the latter obviously
informs the former. IA requires more scientific investigation, partly due to
its very nature, and partly due to its relative youth.

Off-topic meandering about "science", "art" and "craft" follows...

Of course the first programmers were almost universally scientists, in
particular mathematicians. As such they knew what science was, and generally
agreed that programming was not an example of it.
However they decided it was definitely an educated bourgeois endeavour, and
hence frequently labelled it "art" (possibly influenced by the educated
classes at the time including an unprecedented number of young men who had
gone to college to escape a life where being a craftsman was the best many
of their siblings could aspire to; definitely influenced by this being a
time when the bogus "two cultures" separation between the artistic and
scientific mentalities was at their greatest and hence there were few
artists around the computers to tell them to cop on).

Had they been more eager to recognise their craft as such they might have
been amused that the "high-priest" scenario that was common in the era
before P.C.s had strong analogies in the role Blacksmiths had played in
village life in medieval and earlier Europe.

These days the word "craft" has connotations of pseudo-artistic junk sold to
tourists (to where, from where doesn't matter), so it's still not that
popular. I like it because of yet another bunch of connotations that also
aren't related, but it does seem to be the best description of what I do for
a living.