Seriously, consider that the PARC people were working on perceptrons decades before they became truly feasible. There is almost always prior art to build on. T

Seriously, consider that the PARC people were working on perceptrons decades before they became truly feasible. There is almost always prior art to build on. The most valuable engineering skill I find is the ability to say "I've run into a problem, I am not the first person to run into this, let me research how other people solved similar problems so I can understand my problem and it's edges better".