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Right, I'm not saying they can't be broken down somewhat, but the parent comment said he broke then down until the tasks are trivial. I don't think that example
by icebraining 7y ago
Right, I'm not saying they can't be broken down somewhat, but the parent comment said he broke then down until the tasks are trivial. I don't think that example is trivial! Or that it can be estimated to take up about a day.
Regardig the "research" vs "engineering", I don't think you can cleanly separate the two; many otherwise straightforward projects include a research component, even if it is just about using a new browser feature in a novel way, or some such.
- nl 7y agoFor me, research is something where is is unknown if something is possible. Engineering is where we know it is possible, even if it isn't clear how long it will take.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoUnder that definition, very little is research. Warp drives is research. Curing cancer is engineering. Obviously, you have implicit constraints in mind. "Is something possible given $constraints?". And the set of those constraints is where the line between research and engineering starts to blur. If you set $constraints to "in time and under budget for the project", which seems like a very reasonable value, then it turns out that a lot of programming tasks become research work, unless you're only churning out cookie-cutter websites.
- nl 7y agoWe don't know if (all) cancer can be cured at all. And no, "in time and budget" doesn't suddenly make something into a research project. Speeding up some technical process might be research (eg, the old 1TB sorting benchmarks drove research). But project constraints, and the fact that the team themself has never used a specific technology or whatever doesn't turn it into research. Yes, I know that's a term people use, but it's a different thing to scientific research.