3 ms·

> There’s nothing novel about software Well that’s not even close to true.

• akersten 7y ago
  I think you're confusing the term "novel" with "impressive", "complicated", or "hard." Indisputably, there is software that checks those other boxes. But it's not novel. Software is fundamentally a mechanism that maps inputs to outputs. We've had a similar mechanism for a while now, mathematics. And we decided that - as complicated as mathematical theory and equations can be, there is no justice making a particular instance of math a novel, patentable, encumbered creation. It's all a derivative of the concept of mathematical manipulation, same as all software is a manipulation of a state machine. Saying "this particular combination of state transitions is novel" is non-sensical to me.
  • egdod 7y ago
    If that particular combination of state transitions has happened before, then it lacks novelty. If it hasn’t though...
  • hk__2 7y ago
    Slightly related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime