TITLE: You Have to Write the Program
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 29, 2005  5:35 AM
DESC: A Happy New Year! wish that reminds us why we write programs.
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BODY:
As we close out 2005, an
<A HREF="http://www.msutoday.msu.edu/research/index.php3?article=22Apr2005-11">
   article in MSU Today</A>
reminds us why scientists have to run experiments,
not just sit in their easy chairs theorizing.  A
group of physicists was working on a new mix of
quarks and gluons.  Their theory predicted that
they were creating a plasma with few or no interactions
between the particles.  When they ran their experiments,
they instead "created a new state of matter, a nearly
perfect fluid in which the quarks and gluons interact
strongly."  Gary Westfall, the lead MSU researcher on
the project, said,

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
What is so incredibly exciting about this discovery
is that what we found turned out to be totally
different from what we thought we would find.  ...
But it shows that you cannot just rely on making
theories alone.  In the end, you have to build the
machine and do the experiment.  What you learn is
often more beautiful than the most vivid imagination.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Folks who don't write computer programs often say
that computers only do what we tell them to do,
implying somehow that their mechanistic nature
makes them uninteresting.  Anyone who writes
programs, though, has had the sort of experience
that Gary Westfall describes.  What we learn by
writing a program and watching it is often more
beautiful than anything we could ever have imagined.

I love this game.

Best wishes to you all for a 2006 full of vivid
imagination and beautiful programs.
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