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Literature Text
He who re-invents the wheel, will understand much better how a
wheel works.
Or:
He who re-invents the wheel, may actually invent a much better wheel.
Nadav Har’El’s response was:
He who re-invents the wheel will likely design a square wheel and spend
a year trying to figure out why it doesn’t work properly.
This cluster of three aphorisms was originally featured in an exchange of Hackers-IL ( [link] ), which is a YahooGroup of Israeli professional and enthusiastic software developers, who are also wannabe philosophers (we mean hacker as in [link] , so computer intrusion lamers please begone - also see [link] ).
Anyway, the story behind it was that we discussed whether it was a good idea to think of an algorithm yourself, instead of looking up the best one in the technical and scientific literature, and after thinking of it for a while, and then noting these two aphorisms to a friend and a member of the group, I posted them to the list to which Nadav (a different member of the list) replied.
The sentiments here are not fully original because other people had been talking about “making rounder wheels” or “building a better mousetrap” for some time before that. Furthermore, sometime after we had that exchange on Hackers-IL, Paul Graham wrote about how amateurs (which used to mean a crafstman or artist who loves what he does, and would sometimes do it for free, and was a compliment) can surpass what more “professional” and better paid people can do.
You can find the original discussion, with some comments, here - [link] .
This bit proved quite popular, being quoted in the opening of a scientific paper that Nadav found on Google Scholar, and also on the signature of a web forum message in Italian, where it sparked a discussion about its origins.
Anyway, the story behind it was that we discussed whether it was a good idea to think of an algorithm yourself, instead of looking up the best one in the technical and scientific literature, and after thinking of it for a while, and then noting these two aphorisms to a friend and a member of the group, I posted them to the list to which Nadav (a different member of the list) replied.
The sentiments here are not fully original because other people had been talking about “making rounder wheels” or “building a better mousetrap” for some time before that. Furthermore, sometime after we had that exchange on Hackers-IL, Paul Graham wrote about how amateurs (which used to mean a crafstman or artist who loves what he does, and would sometimes do it for free, and was a compliment) can surpass what more “professional” and better paid people can do.
You can find the original discussion, with some comments, here - [link] .
This bit proved quite popular, being quoted in the opening of a scientific paper that Nadav found on Google Scholar, and also on the signature of a web forum message in Italian, where it sparked a discussion about its origins.
© 2013 - 2024 shlomif
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