in reply to Re^4: Reinvent the wheel!
in thread Reinvent the wheel!

But we don't get anywhere by telling Picasso at an early age to stop messing with paints and go milk the goats because 'everything to know about art has already been learned by others'.

But surely there will be no giants at all if all we do is stamp out seeds where we find them.

That's a strawman argument, with very little connection to what I wrote. Surely my argument deserves more consideration than such callous dismissal!

And how exactly did these 'people' get that knowledge?

As I wrote in my original reply, by reading code, by examining prior art, by iteration and refinement, by reviewing the desires and needs of users.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^6: Reinvent the wheel!
by ruzam (Curate) on Mar 22, 2009 at 01:51 UTC

    As I wrote in my original reply, by reading code, by examining prior art, by iteration and refinement, by reviewing the desires and needs of users

    Oh please, and I'm tossing out a strawman argument? What prior Art? Prior art comes from someone who dared to 're-invent' the wheel in the first place. Iteration and refinement? Isn't that exactly what re-invention is about? Reviewing the desires and needs of users? There are no users, just an itch that needs scratching. You're describing the 'post' re-invention phase when highly skilled yet un-imaginative people jump on the wagon and start squeezing the new wheel for their own use.

    We may as well be drones stuck in a back room reverse engineering the latest gadgets. That's not creativity, that's mindless automation.

[reply]

In Section Meditations