Monday, September 19th, 2005

That’s why I tinker

Filed under: Academia/Research — Daniel Lemire @ 10:18

Here’s an old quote that’s worth repeating from time to time:

People like me need to do things in order to understand. That’s why I build systems. That’s why I tinker. That’s why I read so much.
(Jim Gray, IEEE Distributed Systems Online 2004)

Short story: research is not about spending time in the library. And it is not about solving problems either. Research is about building crazy new things.

2 Comments »

  1. [...] a bit here: Jim Gray missing at sea, What is infinite storage? , Science in an exponential world, That’s why I tinker, A “Measure of Transaction Processing” 20 Years Later, ACM Queue - A Conversation with Tim [...]

    Pingback by UC Berkeley holding tribute for Jim Gray — 16/11/2007 @ 8:49

  2. [...] See also my posts My research process and That’s why I tinker. [...]

    Pingback by Directed research is useless — 19/11/2007 @ 18:42

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