My last thread...

[-Jrabbit]

That sounds more like an engineer than a physicist.

FWIW, my personal experience with physics majors, both within and outside Poly, is that their grammatical skills tend to be pretty sharp.

[SlowwHand]

I guess it's all relative.

[KrazyHorse]

That sounds more like an engineer than a physicist.

FWIW, my personal experience with physics majors, both within and outside Poly, is that their grammatical skills tend to be pretty sharp.

I said they were pretty good (assuming you're leaving out ESL types)

My point is that we often choose not to or cannot communicate the things we work on in plain English due to objective difficulties rather than individual failings.

[Asher]

That sounds more like an engineer than a physicist.

FWIW, my personal experience with physics majors, both within and outside Poly, is that their grammatical skills tend to be pretty sharp.

I think when you get people with highly analytical minds (I'm thinking lots of CS, physics, math majors) they tend to have fairly good grammar. From the CS perspective, we study grammars formally for a few courses but that's not the only way we become familiar with them.

I think JM is a good example. He used to be far more parenthesis-happy, including nesting them (like this (and this (and this))). The field of study kind of forces a systematic and analytical way to interpret data, and rigid grammar is a consequence of that. For me, my mind works a lot like a formal grammar parser (not unlike a compiler). It actually annoys me when I see a mismatched parenthesis or missing punctuation. If life were fair, it would abort the person with a compiler error.

[KrazyHorse]

Dude, they should at least get a warning so that they get a chance to fix it before runtime.

[KrazyHorse]

I have nested parentheses before, but I usually try to avoid it when not making a joke.

[Asher]

Dude, they should at least get a warning so that they get a chance to fix it before runtime.

Unfortunately, when one provides this courtesry warning all they get in return is a label of 'GRAMMAR NAZI'. As such, they do not deserve the warning now.

[orange]

Sex dries up after 1 year.

I'm entitled to a whole year???

[Kuciwalker]

7. Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' -- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.

[Kuciwalker]

Oh boy YOU HAVE STRUCK A NERVE. I NEED TO GO COOL OFF.

HONESTLY. MATH AND PHYSICS DEGREE PROGRAMMERS?

I think I know the only exception to this rule, ever. My partner for OS was a physics major and was an excellent programmer

[Jon Miller]

Honestly, in my field most of us should be at least good programmers, but are not.

JM