On 27/08/2011 06:23 PM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> http://www.xkcd.com/664/
>
>    I wonder how many great programmatical inventions have been lost
> because they were made within the programming industry rather than
> the academia.

After reading TFWTF, I'm tempted to say "not many". But then again, who 
really knows?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 27/08/2011 06:23 PM, Warp wrote:
> > Orchid XP v8<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
> >> http://www.xkcd.com/664/
> >
> >    I wonder how many great programmatical inventions have been lost
> > because they were made within the programming industry rather than
> > the academia.

> After reading TFWTF, I'm tempted to say "not many". But then again, who 
> really knows?

  The industry does often make quite advanced discoveries and development,
even if it ends up being properietary and burdened by approximately half a
million patents. I'm just wondering how many of such discoveries never
become public knowledge for example because the company decides to discard
the feature from their software (but still keeps a tight hold to the rights,
of course) or the solution just goes unnoticed (and the programmer is not
allowed to divulge it).

  Of course the academia and the industry often tend to solve different
types of problems. The industry tries to solve mostly practical problems,
while the academia often tries to solve mostly theoretical problems (most
of which may or may not have a practical application). For example, where
the academia tries to solve problems like "what is the fastest algorithm
to determine if two connected graphs are strongly bisimilar", the industry
tries to solve problems like "what's the fastest way of making millions of
database accesses" or "how do we make these graphics look realistic in
real time.

  Both goals sometimes overlap (especially nowadays with all this fad with
multithreaded programming, which has strong theoretical foundations), and
at both venues there are sometimes excursions to the other side (with the
industry solving theoretical problems and the academia practical ones), but
it's probably not the norm.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:23:43 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> http://www.xkcd.com/664/
> 
>   I wonder how many great programmatical inventions have been lost
> because they were made within the programming industry rather than the
> academia.

Indeed, and of course there are some concepts that nobody can use because 
they're made in the industry and patented by companies with armies of 
lawyers rather than in academia.  I wonder how different the software 
landscape would be today if some of the utterly stupid patents there are 
outstanding lawsuits about weren't covered by a patent.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 8/27/2011 10:23, Warp wrote:
>    I wonder how many great programmatical inventions have been lost
> because they were made within the programming industry rather than
> the academia.

Given the impact of academic inventions on practical programming, I wonder 
as well. (Consider, for example, relational databases, P/V semaphores and 
deadlock prevention techniques, parsing/language theory, etc.)  I'm thinking 
that the really big academic discoveries do indeed tend to have a stunning 
impact on practical business, in the form of stuff like RDBMS and parser 
generators and public key encryption and etc.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

Post a reply to this message