up a level
post article
search
admin
main
parent
|
Re: Medical Open Source Boot Camp = Drivel
by A Real Physician on Wednesday October 25, @02:21AM
|
| Executive Summary:
What drivel.
Let's break it down like this:
This guy comes across as a wannabe who didn't quite have the equipment to get into med school, or to pursue something more meaningful than designing the millionth reimplementation of "yet another menuing system."
"Real Programmer" makes the kinda dumb error of assuming that because physicians don't spend their free time surfing for pornography, they must be computer illiterate. Of course, we're actually doing useful things like saving lives, instead of writing a new IRC script. Of course, we're usually searching NIH to try to get a cancer patient into the latest chemo trial, instead of clocking penny stocks and reading "The Drudge Report" during the two hour lunches at his "conservative" banks.
Curse our technological backwater-ness! And hail to bankers as the true torch-bearers of our technological future. Who'd a thunk it. Engines of innovation, they.
And no, I can tell you that as a programmer who previously worked in the industry for years, writing software pales in significance and difficulty compared with the daily demands of medicine. So forgive us if we're less than impressed with "real programmers" who spend 6 hour days lifting an occasional finger to do something as globally significant as correcting a mismatched opening brace.
Most physicians use computers in sophisticated ways that are foreign to most "real programmers", which is why "real programmers" can't understand what a physician/scientist is discussing. What we need are programmers able to understand a discussion of strategies for manipulating protein and nucleotide databases, statistical tests, natural language processing, large-scale simulations, and artificial intelligence.
Instead, what we get for the most part are folks like "real programmer" here, who thinks the hard problems are at the level of "how can I hook up my [real] database to my [latest] Java incarnation of 'The Mortgage Calculator?'"
Whoa. Programming is deep.
Programmers who are conversant only with computer language and technology are literally a dime a dozen. Keep cranking out those B2B.com applets, kiddies. The money's good, but it just ain't really "that hard."
Programming is simple enough that any programmer who doesn't have broad training in science or some other field OTHER than computer science is highly unlikely to be of ANY use in solving today's real problems.
Do: leave the deep design of medical and scientific software to those who understand those fields, and who are involved in problems a wee deeper than spending days coming up with a really keen new way of implementing a Singleton.
Hint: we will call you when we come up with the solution to a real medical or scientific problem, and need you to port it to the OS/platform of the month. But I'm afraid for most of you the understanding of the problem and solution will be at, um, register level.
Signed,
A Real Physician (C) and Real Programmer (TM) who thinks programming ain't nothing more than writing recipes for fast cooks. |
| Post Reply |
Important Stuff:
Note: Fields with bold titles are required.
Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads,
Read other people's messages before posting your own to
avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your
message is about.
Please do not post offtopic, inflammatory, inappropriate, illegal,
or offensive comments. Repeat offenders will be sanctioned.
|
