Cool stuff. Under "Why bother with this blog?" are some off-topic ideas - this one for example: The most important aspect: no matter what you want to do, star

Cool stuff. Under "Why bother with this blog?" are some off-topic ideas - this one for example: The most important aspect: no matter what you want to do, start by thinking before reading from someone else or asking someone else (no matter who). ... I suppose the value of this nugget depends on your goal. If your goal is to invent something devoid of any previous human experience, I suppose it could apply. Think outside the box. Reaallly outside the box. In fact, there is no box. But if your goal is to invent something or solve any problem whatsoever that involves previous human experience (99.99% of situations), this seems more like an antipattern. Right up there with "never show anyone what you've done - they might steal it." Still, this comment makes me think back to my days of programming on an old 6502 Atari computer. It was so hard to get documentation that it seemed like everything I did was my own invention - no matter how trivial. It's not hard to feel creative in that kind of environment. I wonder if that's one of the things we actually miss when we think back to that simpler time. The unlikelihood of discovering that our inventions had already been done to death.