Best Threequel

[turnip_farmer]

Realistically, no one from the 24th century would need to know how to do syntax-based programming at all; they would give natural language directives and AIs would translate that into workable code.

Exactly. Which is what they do in Star Trek. And is what Scotty tries to do at first in 1986. But when that fails he's suddenly a programming whiz.

 

[TwoSix]

Exactly. Which is what they do in Star Trek. And is what Scotty tries to do at first in 1986. But when that fails he's suddenly a programming whiz.

Star Trek isn't remotely realistic, is all I'm saying.

 

[embee]

Exactly. Which is what they do in Star Trek. And is what Scotty tries to do at first in 1986. But when that fails he's suddenly a programming whiz.

Ahhh... But let's not forget who we're talking about.

Montgomery Scott, engineer extraordinaire.

When something needs to be fixed, Scotty unfailingly figures out the fix in record time. I mean, he'll lie to you about how much time he needs first (to make himself look like a miracle worker) but he'll also figure it out quicker than anyone else.

Even Georgie LaForge would take an agonizingly long time to figure out how to couple a tachyon emitter to the main deflector dish to try to reverse the polarity of the phase shift anomaly. In that amount of time, Scotty would have been able to reroute power from the phaser emitters through the port nacelle to give a crippled Constitution-class vessel better than 3/4 impulse after the dilithium reserves are depleted. It willna be pretty, Captain, but it should git ye where ye need t'go. He kin do it in an hour, but since ye need it in fifteen, he'll do it fer ye in ten.

Could his nephew Peter Preston have done that? No. I mean, obviously we'll never know, as Khan killed him, but Preston was more the loyal and dutiful engineer than the whiz-bang engineer like his uncle.

So figuring out how to code at the level of a Stanford graduate circa 1986 should present no significant problems.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Star Trek isn't remotely realistic, is all I'm saying.

Ahhh... But let's not forget who we're talking about.

Montgomery Scott, engineer extraordinaire.

But it's the contrast in that scene that gets me. The joke about 'future guy doesn't understand our technology' immediately followed by the future guy acing our technology.

You could have had him look at a diagram or a production centre and tell them 'you want to increase the kiflidium content in the base material and inject an izwot-jinjulium alloy to the mix at this stage here'; and the boss would be all 'throw out this lunatic' and then some engineer in the back would go 'hang on, sir! I think this might be a breakthough!'

That's the only change required to make this the best Star Trek film till First Contact.

 

[MarkB]

Ahhh... But let's not forget who we're talking about.

Montgomery Scott, engineer extraordinaire.

When something needs to be fixed, Scotty unfailingly figures out the fix in record time. I mean, he'll lie to you about how much time he needs first (to make himself look like a miracle worker) but he'll also figure it out quicker than anyone else.

Even Georgie LaForge would take an agonizingly long time to figure out how to couple a tachyon emitter to the main deflector dish to try to reverse the polarity of the phase shift anomaly. In that amount of time, Scotty would have been able to reroute power from the phaser emitters through the port nacelle to give a crippled Constitution-class vessel better than 3/4 impulse after the dilithium reserves are depleted. It willna be pretty, Captain, but it should git ye where ye need t'go. He kin do it in an hour, but since ye need it in fifteen, he'll do it fer ye in ten.

Could his nephew Peter Preston have done that? No. I mean, obviously we'll never know, as Khan killed him, but Preston was more the loyal and dutiful engineer than the whiz-bang engineer like his uncle.

So figuring out how to code at the level of a Stanford graduate circa 1986 should present no significant problems.

Yeah, this is a guy who reads technical manuals for fun, in his spare time. If anyone has a good grip of programming and engineering history, it's him.

 

[embee]

But it's the contrast in that scene that gets me. The joke about 'future guy doesn't understand our technology' immediately followed by the future guy acing our technology.

You could have had him look at a diagram or a production centre and tell them 'you want to increase the kiflidium content in the base material and inject an izwot-jinjulium alloy to the mix at this stage here'; and the boss would be all 'throw out this lunatic' and then some engineer in the back would go 'hang on, sir! I think this might be a breakthough!'

That's the only change required to make this the best Star Trek film till First Contact.

He understands it. He then derisively calls it quaint.

 

[embee]

That's the only change required to make this the best Star Trek film till First Contact.

You clearly have never enjoyed Shakespeare in the original Klingon...

 

[Sacrosanct]

Sinbad and Eye of the Tiger was my favorite Sinbad Harryhausen movie, and it was the third.

 

[Deset Gled]

But it's the contrast in that scene that gets me. The joke about 'future guy doesn't understand our technology' immediately followed by the future guy acing our technology.

You could have had him look at a diagram or a production centre and tell them 'you want to increase the kiflidium content in the base material and inject an izwot-jinjulium alloy to the mix at this stage here'; and the boss would be all 'throw out this lunatic' and then some engineer in the back would go 'hang on, sir! I think this might be a breakthough!'

But that ...is... the joke.

 

[turnip_farmer]

But that ...is... the joke.

Your sense of humour is wrong.