[Axiom-developer] Learning Axiom

[daly]

The nuclear weapons labs (Los Alamos, Livermore) had a mentor-student
relationship where new physicists would spend 10-15 years learning
their craft. Since the end of the cold war most of the senior people
have retired or died. The new people are now "learning" from people
who were never part of the original team and who have never done
primary work, such as designing a weapon that was actually tested.

One of the key problems is that the original team members rarely
wrote down what they knew. As the original team members left a lot
of vital information was lost.

Efforts have been made to embody the information in computer programs
but it is widely acknowledged that the programs are only an
approximation and contain many "fudge factors" and "work-arounds" to
get what is believed to be "the right answers". These factors are
based on experience rather than physics. They are tacit knowledge from
the past with no real justification nor any way to know if they are
still reasonable.

Axiom was originally developed in a similar lab environment. The
IBM team was inventing new ideas. There were no "experienced" 
people. Progress was rapid and chaotic. Nothing was written down.
New team members (e.g. me) learned by mentoring. Eventually the 
team broke up, some died, some retired.

Many "hacks" were added to get the "right answers". These factors
were based on experience rather than mathematics. They are tacit
knowledge from the past with no real justification nor any review
to know if they are still reasonable.

We are in the rather fortunate position that we can review,
document, justify, and prove the code. Indeed, this is the only
way that there can be a community that "learns", that is, a
community where

... learning must be understood as a process of identity formation
    through which unknowing, unschooled novices gradually come to
    understand themselves as contributing, knowing members of a 
    particular community of practice ...

     -- Laura Agnes McNamara, May 2001 [0]

Since the "lab environment" no longer exists the only possible path
for a new person to learn is from documentation. Properly done,
this can form the basis for formal courses, teaching the next
generation.

Tim

[0] McNamara, Laura Agnes
    "Ways of Knowing About Weapons: The Cold War's End at the
      Los Alamos National Laboratory"
    PhD thesis, University of New Mexico, May 2001