Refusing to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

Refusing to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants(drmario.substack.com)

2 points by dr__mario 4 years ago | 3 comments

dr__mario 4 years ago |

Hi HN! I'm one of the HN lurkers: I read you a lot but haven't had the courage to join the conversations (which is something I want to start doing).

I'm submitting my article here with the hope of starting a healthy debate around something that, to be honest, I'm not sure if it's more prevalent in Spain (where I am from), or specifically the companies I've worked for: why do people start trying to solve something without checking previous work on the topic?

Have I been hanging "with the wrong crowd"? Am I missing positive aspects for doing that?

new_guy 4 years ago | |

I can't speak for anyone else but I wrote a chess engine by myself without using all the tutorials/guides out there.

Because it's the challenge, just having something handed to you or Googling it just takes all the fun away, plus when you look at prior work you risk blinding yourself to other ways that might not work but are still worth exploring.

But that's for personal stuff, for business it usually makes sense to check what other people have done, otherwise you get what's called 'not invented here'[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here

dr__mario 4 years ago | | |

If it's personal stuff, I can see the point in trying to do something without Googling at first and how that can be fun for many and interesting for learning, but still, I don't think that learning is "complete" without then seeing previous progress on the topic.