Re: File's Owner

FROM : James Merkel
DATE : Sun May 25 22:14:17 2008

On May 25, 2008, at 12:02 PM, Hamish Allan wrote:

> What this thread has reminded me of is an ongoing conversation I have
> with a friend of mine, who refuses to countenance the square root of
> minus one, because he doesn't think it means anything. I explain to
> him how useful it can be to admit complex numbers for various
> real-world situations, but because there exists an algorithm to
> generate mandelbrots which doesn't ever do sqrt(n) for n<0, he thinks
> this proves that complex numbers are entirely unnecessary and
> therefore best avoided.
>
> It doesn't matter how much you explain that "real" numbers are
> imaginary too, or that the square root of 4 apples is also meaningless
> in a physical sense. He has a sort of emotional investment in the
> uselessness of complex numbers that completely blinkers him. The
> difference is, I doubt that this particular friend will ever have
> reason to do anything that will be made easier by using complex
> numbers, so I don't suppose his opinion will ever change. But I'm
> hoping that it's just a matter of time for Johnny.
>
> (Maybe when he has occasion to create a document-based app it will
> become clearer? Although bags I not the one to tell him that
> NSDocumentController is not designed to mediate between his view and
> his NSDocument ;] )


The way I look at it,  when you are attempting to learn a new subject 
you need to be humble. By that I mean you need to jettison some 
preconceived ideas and probably accept some things without a complete 
understanding (at least initially).  If you are not willing to do 
that,  you will have a hard time assimilating new ideas.

Case in point, when I first started taking courses in electrical 
engineering, I remember some people saying that if you had previous 
experience with electronics/radio (like for example, you were a Ham 
radio operator), you might have more difficulty learning some concepts 
because you had preconceived ideas that were incorrect. (By the way, 
electrical engineering is where you will use complex numbers.)

More to the subject at hand, I thought File's owner was just a 
mechanism for connecting nib objects to code. Nothing more or less. If 
I'm missing something, someone can correct me.

Jim