by JSH » Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:53:23
came to Java from C++ the way maybe a lot of developers did which
was being on a project where I thought I'd do one language and being
told I was to learn it because that was the language we were using.
So I did. I learned Java and became a lead developer on the project
and helped bring a new app into the world where far as I know it's
still out there saving lives.
But the language became key in my bigger struggle to find validation
for my efforts when after playing with my own amateur mathematical
ideas, I was called names, like "subhuman" and crazy. When I had
strangers trying to find anything they could say to me in posts to be
as nasty as they could, because I was playing with my own math ideas.
Maybe there is something good that can come from hatred and
viciousness when responding to it is motivation to DO something that
can take you beyond people telling you that you are nothing that you
are a cretin that you are beneath contempt because you're trying to do
your amateur mathematical research.
And I made Class Viewer, put it on SourceForge and as its ranking went
up, I could say, yeah, I can do something. I can MAKE something
despite what these math people are telling me. Something they can
see, as I hadn't learned yet to repudiate the negative judgments.
After all, for my research to be accepted, didn't I need acceptance
from the mathematicians?
I NEEDED it because I'd found what I thought were proofs, and could
explain them in detail, but these people said I was wrong, and that
they were the experts, and that I was crazy. So I thought, maybe I
am. What if I am?
I know. I'll make something and see.
And I could write my prime counting function, which I did in Java, and
see those counts of prime numbers to verify against known counts, and
see the same people hurling insults, still. And I could see and show,
though they never missed a beat. Facts meant nothing to them.
Demonstration was meaningless...but wait, I was published! But they
fought against my paper after publication. The journal SWJPAM died.
Where could I go? What could I do?
Where was the world? So connected, through the Internet, but where
was the world?
I saw newspaper articles proclaiming greatness for people I knew were
wrong, and they ate it up.
They cheered each other, and I knew what it was for people to be wrong
together, for the victory of popular belief.
Posters here believe that I talk about Google rankings to brag.
Nope.
I talk about the concrete to have a hold on my sense of my own sanity.
To say that there IS something concrete beyond what people say because
people can lie.
You can sit back and think this story is not about you, but it would
be you, if you found something that certain people didn't want known
and they could just get together and say, no.
The mathematical community today has problems. Those problems seen
first by me in those insults hurled at me just for trying, and now in
the denial of proof, or even the definition of mathematical proof.
But the concrete remains so I have comfort in it.
I have my open source Java project on SourceForge. It is my Class
Viewer that does some simple things, but I think it does them well,
and no math person can ever call me crazy or subhuman ever, and it
completely stick.
Though they still try.
No matter how hard they try and they have tried for so many years, I
am human. I am not sub. I am not secon
