4 ms·
"In computing, we mostly stand on each other's feet." -Richard Hamming
by omegaham 7y ago
"In computing, we mostly stand on each other's feet."
-Richard Hamming
- neilv 7y ago"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my toes."
- kubanczyk 7y ago"my shoulders" actually. From Hal Abelson, who attributes this thought to his Princeton roommate Jeff Goll
- Frost1x 7y agoThis reminds me of a Neil deGrasse Tyson quote to the effect of: "Walk into a bookstore and look at the number of books on a topic. The more books on a topic you see, the less we understand about the topic." There's a lot of clashing perspectives on computing and modern software architectures so I'd say Hamming is on the dot.
- stainforth 7y agoHamming is the compression guy right? I feel theres some extra connection seen here in being able to compress down the redundant info in that section of the bookstore
- eevilspock 7y agoDon't most SV types believe they've picked themselves up by their own bootstrapped?
- dang 7y agoIs there any reason to believe Hamming said this? https://wiki.c2.com/?ShouldersOfGiants https://wiki.c2.com/?ShouldersOfGiants kind of implies no. As far as standing-on-giants jokes go, when Stekel defended himself to Freud with "a dwarf standing on a giant sees a little further", Freud replied "a louse on an astronomer does not". https://books.google.com/books?id=wmB9AAAAMAAJ&q=louse+intitle:freud+inauthor:jones&dq=louse+intitle:freud+inauthor:jones&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7vOz4nYroAhVuFjQIHXsUAVgQ6AEwAHoECAAQAg https://books.google.com/books?id=wmB9AAAAMAAJ&q=louse+intit...