More General posts
August 26, 2002
What's the value of ideas?
Andre Torrez makes the important point that Even You Can Do It. The point is, what's the value of an unimplemented idea? For software Andre thinks that it's pretty small. I think that's probably true. Other sorts of ideas, for example the theory of evolution, are clearly worthwhile and valuable even thought they can't be implemented. There's even a middle ground for software where ideas like software patterns live. These are worth something as conceptual models for thinking about programming problems even if you don't implement them.
Posted by Alex at August 26, 2002 07:55 PMComments
Somehow it felt quite revealing what Donald Knuth told in an interview. He said that he gets what he feels are great ideas from time to time and then as he checks out whether someone else has thought about it already, he almost always finds out that indeed his idea is not original. It is comforting to know that icon like Knuth has the same "problems" as the rest of us. ;-)
(So, ideas are overrated compared to implementations, in my opinion.)
Posted by: Jarno Virtanen on September 1, 2002 11:32 PM
Yes. The problem is that lots of the honor, and in the US it seems the money, goes to the idea. People are always looking for the next big thing. Perhaps the next big thing is a better implementation of an existing idea. Of course if the idea of patenting ideas gets much more traction then that won't be possible any more.
Posted by: Alex Moffat on September 3, 2002 09:08 PM
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