Bob Balaban's Blog

     
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    Bob Balaban

     

    In Theory...

    As you may recall from my previous post...

    Bob Balaban  March 30 2007 07:15:29 PM
    Ok! So, I took a deeeep breath and, with some help from my pals at SNAPPS and a bunch of encouragement /arm-twisting from some friends at IBM, agreed to start a real live blog. This blog right here.

    Geek Stuff: yes, of COURSE I am using the Notes 7.02 blog template. No, of COURSE I have not yet figured out all the features, so for a while this site may be less kewl than it could be (but I have access to the ultimate techsupport -- the author of the template. Thank you IBM!). I am currently using Notes 8 Beta 2 to create my content.

    Why "In Theory" as the blog banner? Well.... let me be a true narcissist and quote myself:

    In theory, theory and reality are the same.
    In reality, they're different

    Another way of saying it:

    In theory, theory and practice are the same.
    In practice, they're not.

    So, "in theory" really means, "not really"

    Did I make this up? Well, as my acquaintance Mad Dog says, "Same words, different order", as in: hardly anything is ever truly  original (unless maybe you're Bob Dylan or Siddhartha or Jimi Hendrix). I really owe this mini-rant to a high school classmate of mine, Eric Siskind . One day back in high school (no, i will NOT tell you what year it was), he said to me, "'In theory' means 'not really'". I thought about it, and realized that he was correct. Many years later I exapnded Eric's original declaration to what you see above, and began using it in conference presentations and training sessions.

    I like it, and it has a lot of applicability to software theory (!) and practice. So, Eric, if you're out there, thanks!