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At the end[1] of the talk[2] at 30c3 by Eleanor Saitta and Quinn Norton, "No Neutral Ground in a Burning World", an audience member suggested that people need s

• marcosdumay 11y ago
  Well, the entire point of Math is that you don't need to learn history to use and improve it. Yes, you can learn a bit from history, but it's very limited, and too specific to help in most situations. And before you ask, I've read Shannon, and Hamming. Didn't read CS Turing papers (did read some others), and I guess there's no further information there that I don't know already. I've also read about the first crypto wars, and quite a lot about economics - enough to know this article is complete bullshit; the author complains that developers don't practice the most damaging practices of economists. Besides, get me a keynesianist that has read Keynes. If you came complaining that people mostly lack basic mathematical knowledge about crypto, and don't know the best practices about software architecture, I'd completely agree. I'll also agree that history is a great tool for making the mathematical and anedonctal knowledge easier to digest. But no, it's not very valuable by itself.
• scott_s 11y ago
  Most physicists have not read the Principia. But the contents of it have been deeply ingrained in every physics curriculum in the world. When work truly is foundational, it actually becomes the foundation of curriculums, and it's not necessary to read the original to learn its material. It is perhaps interesting, or even enlightening, but not necessary.
  • sanderjd 11y ago
    Thank you, was going to say this as well. I read (some) Claude Shannon in my degree program, but I remember thinking how cool it was to see its influence on all the other stuff I'd learned from textbooks and lectures, rather than thinking, "wow, this is all brand new!".
• tikhonj 11y ago
  Overvaluing the "original voices" in a discipline where you don't have to is unhealthy. Take the Turing test: the important part isn't the test, it's the high-level idea. You can get the high level idea without reading Turing's original formulation, and that's all that matters. If you do read his original description, you'll get bogged down in details like running the test in an ESP-proof room. At the end, you'll either be more confused or, at best, not come away with a better understanding of the concepts themselves. Having read the article myself, I don't recommend except out of historical curiosity. It's not the best option to expand your understanding of CS or the philosophy of CS. The same goes for a bunch of other foundational writing. We could take a topic I'm deeply familiar with: functional programming. It's fair to say that much of it goes back to Backus, to his Turing-award speech with the catchy title "Can Programming be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?". The title is worth it, the content isn't. It was brilliant, of course, but it was just the beginning—one limited in arbitrary ways. You're better off learning functional programming as it is now than getting into Backus's FP (what he named his language) because that's a less clear and, crucially, less complete presentation of the important ideas. The language didn't even have named variables back then, it was like always writing in point-free style! Again: it's fine to read this from a historical perspective, but it's not the best way to learn functional programming and you could be a perfectly capable, insightful functional programmer without having read it. Honestly, it feels like the call to read specific works like this is just signalling that you have the "right" background and education to work in a field, which is not where we want to be. This is pretty consistent. Coming up with brilliant theories and insights is a different skill from polishing and completing them which is a different skill from presenting them well. And there's nothing wrong with benefiting from the last part of this pipeline and skipping over earlier, "historically relevant" works especially in fields like CS and math. This isn't to say that you shouldn't learn the concepts, which you probably should. But there's a big difference between "having read Shannon" and "understanding information theory", and only one of those matters.
  • pdkl95 11y ago
    > from a historical perspective That is the only perspective I'm addressing. The comment is in the context of the observation tht we have a generation fo people who don't know there was a "Crypto War" in the 90s. This observation was prescient, with the FBI et al renewing the crypto wars. The historical view is incredibly important in interpreting our current situation. > call to read specific works If you think my reference to Shannon is a call to read any specific work, you're missing the point. The point of the original article and the talk I linked to is the importance of actually taking the time to learn from the people that faced these problems in the past nd learning from them. > Coming up with brilliant theories and insights is a different skill Absolutely, which is why it's important to not waste that skill re-inventing stuff where that time and effort has already been spent by other skilled people. I suggesting that it's a bad idea to spend six months in the laboratory to save you from having to spend six days in the library. A lot of problem have already been solved.