News on China's scientific and technological development.

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Not necessarily. In software, experience cuts both ways, and can be a hinderence as much as a boon.

One of the key reasons that modern day computer programmes are getting so monstrously large is precisely because of bad experience.

A lot of the time, maybe even most of the time, coders stitch together and/or repurpose existing codes rather than start with a clean slate.

That can save time when writing the code, but it also often needlessly bloats the code and slows the programme, where needless calculations are made, because the original piece of code repurposed needed to calculated two things, but you only need it to one one of those calculations in your programme, but cannot be bothered to fully disintengle the two functions of the old code.

So experienced coders could probably get something ready a lot faster than a more talented coder without their experience, but the more talented novice could approach the problem with fresh, new eyes, and potentially come up with a far cleaner, more eligant, and efficient way to tackle the problem at hand.

That is just the efficiency side of things, there is also the security implications.

On some levels, more established codes could be more secure, as they have been debugged for longer. But the flip side is that if you rely on experience and use the same code elements in a lot of places, if someone found a way to exploit a well established code element, that could open up a hell of a lot of software to the same expilot if they all used that code element.

My point is that it cuts both ways, and it will depend entirely on the circumstances, so it would be rather foolish to make any categorical pronouncements on what is best.

A simple example, recently a "smart" camera made by Samsung found to be vulnerable to hacking (
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), the problem were made worst by the fact that the webserver in the camera were running as root. For the non-geek crowd, it means the program can do anything the hacker wants to the camera. A developer with slightly more experience should know the webserver should be run under the "nobody" account with almost no priviledge on the system.

In software development, experience is very important.
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
A simple example, recently a "smart" camera made by Samsung found to be vulnerable to hacking (
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
), the problem were made worst by the fact that the webserver in the camera were running as root. For the non-geek crowd, it means the program can do anything the hacker wants to the camera. A developer with slightly more experience should know the webserver should be run under the "nobody" account with almost no priviledge on the system.

In software development, experience is very important.

Totally agree, nobody disputing that experience is very important in software development, what I said (and misunderstood by some) was less important than let say high performance Turbofan engine development (I know a bit extreme, I just want to get to the point) or in Electrical or Civil Engineering.

Also what you need for software development is not much ... people and computers ... no machineries or other big investments
 

Quickie

Colonel
I don't think it is allowed without approval from Intel

Anyway X86 architecture is so obsolete and inefficient, it will die in 10 years

Other than the x86 modules being embedded, there is no difference than if AMD is selling the same in its own chip package, and the rest of the conditions can still falls within the license agreement AMD originally has with Intel.

I think the x86 tag was only referring to the type of instruction set and it should be of the 64 bits version.
 

vesicles

Colonel
Fight between experience and fresh ideas is not only limited to computer programming. Every profession is the same. New comers are less limited to the existing rules and usually come up with fresh ideas, whereas existing experts have tons of experience and can solve problems quickly. This is true everywhere.

I still remember, when I first started grad school, my advisor told me "when an expert in the field tells you something can be done, it's most likely that it can be done. However, when they tell you something cannot be done, you should still try it yourself because they are limited by the existing knowledge and skills that made them famous and don't want to venture into the unknown." This statement nicely summarizes the differences between experience and fresh ideas.

You need experience to gain a "sixth sense" of where the field is going, to be visionary. You need fresh blood to come up daring and sometimes crazy ideas to get you there. To succeed, you need both.

I used to be amazed at how every expert in the field seemingly converged to the same direction when I went to meetings/conferences as a student or a postdoc. I wondered how they seemingly gained that sixth sense and all came to the same conclusion without communicating with each other. Now I'm beginning to do the same thing and finally appreciate the power of experience (being able to keep up with the field is a nice sign that I'm finally at the frontier and possibly among those leading the charge...). With experience, you see the field from above and will be able to gauge the future (well, sort of... you need to be good at it first though). Then you need the young bucks who don't care about rules and simply plow through obstacles and get you there.

Like I said, you need both to succeed. so when you assemble a team, you need a combination of experience and young bucks.
 

superdog

Junior Member
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Synthesis and characterization of the pentazolate anion cyclo-N5ˉ in (N5)6(H3O)3(NH4)4Cl

Abstract

Pentazole (HN5), an unstable molecular ring comprising five nitrogen atoms, has been of great interest to researchers for the better part of a century. We report the synthesis and characterization of the pentazolate anion stabilized in a (N5)6(H3O)3(NH4)4Cl salt. The anion was generated by direct cleavage of the C–N bond in a multisubstituted arylpentazole using m-chloroperbenzoic acid and ferrous bisglycinate. The structure was confirmed by single-crystal x-ray diffraction analysis, which highlighted stabilization of the cyclo-N5ˉ ring by chloride, ammonium, and hydronium. Thermal analysis indicated the stability of the salt below 117°C on the basis of thermogravimetry-measured onset decomposition temperature.
I can't find any English news article discussing this, the Science article is not open access, so here is a short summary of its implication:

NJUST achieved the world's first synthesis of the N5− anion. This is a major breakthrough in developing the future's ultrahigh performance explosives and rocket propellant. It has the potential to greatly reduce the size of missiles while maintaining range and power. With that said, a ton of research still needs to be done before this can be applied to the defense industry, and we may not see those applied research getting published.

p.s. NJUST was previously the PLA Artillery Engineering Institute. Today it is no longer a PLA owned institution, but it still hosts China's best program in "special energy technology and engineering" which is basically the study of chemical engineering in weapons.
 
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Franklin

Captain
China is now a big spender on science and technology. More than 2% of its GDP goes to R&D, second only after the US. Does anyone know how much of that money is being spend on military development ? In Israel its 35%, in America its 17% and in Germany only 2% of their R&D spending goes to military programs.

How much for China ?
 

kwaigonegin

Colonel
China is now a big spender on science and technology. More than 2% of its GDP goes to R&D, second only after the US. Does anyone know how much of that money is being spend on military development ? In Israel its 35%, in America its 17% and in Germany only 2% of their R&D spending goes to military programs.

How much for China ?

I going to say finding that actual number is about as easy as finding Noah's ark.
 
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