Makes me wonder how many "breakthroughs" came from academic research and how many came from tinkering and doing...
Unfortunately, right after all this reading - I have to do the opposite and write a dissertation research proposal... But once that's done, I can spend time writing code!
5 comments:
I believe all breakthroughs come from tinkering and doing. Some academics occasionally write papers about their results of tinkering and doing though.
Academics is more about communicating your ideas to others, to inspire them further and avoid duplication. All the real innovation is in tinkering IMO.
I guess I'm just continually amazed by academics who don't tinker - and yet insist on publishing half-baked ideas.
I'm at a Research-One school - and I find that the academics at this level try to find grad students to do the tinkering for them. But the most successful are the ones who continue to tinker themselves.
I'm at the other end of the spectrum. I do a ton of tinkering, but I've published nothing, so if I don't come up with a popular product in the next few years I'll probably have no impact on the rest of the world.
Once again, XKCD nails it: http://xkcd.com/664/
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