Can we make any comparison between programmers' "useless inventions" and the scientific endeavor? As Marie Curie puts it: > The story of radiology in war offer

Can we make any comparison between programmers' "useless inventions" and the scientific endeavor? As Marie Curie puts it: > The story of radiology in war offers a striking example of the unsuspected amplitude that the application of purely scientific discoveries can take under certain conditions. X rays had had only a limited usefulness up to the time of the war. The great catastrophe which was let loose upon humanity, accumulating its victims in terrifying numbers, brought up by reaction the ardent desire to save everything that could be saved and to exploit every means of sparing and protecting human life. > At once there appeared an effort to make the X ray yield its maximum of service. What had seemed difficult became easy and received an immediate solution. The material and the personnel were multiplied as if by enchantment. All those who did not understand gave in or accepted; those who did not know learned; those who had been indifferent became devoted. Thus the scientific discovery achieved the conquest of its natural field of action. A similar evolution took place in radium therapy, or the medical application of radiations emitted by the radio elements. > What are we to conclude from this unhoped-for development shared between the new radiations revealed to us by science at the end of the nineteenth century? It seems that they must make our confidence in disinterested research more alive and increase our reverence and admiration for it. That's similar to the sudden usefulness of video conferencing software to continue critical business (healthcare, education) during the pandemic. But video software hasn't been a "useless invention" - its use has been obvious ever since Doug Engelbart demo'd it. Developers, to the extent that we do enjoy making useless things and designing useless abstractions, lack a north star akin to scientists' pursuit of "truth". Optimization and elegance come to mind, but they aren't established as ends-in-themselves in the same way that truth or knowledge is. My gut (a programmer's gut) tells me that the comparison could hold up, especially if we adjusted our north star. [0] https://history.aip.org/history/exhibits/curie/curie.pdf https://history.aip.org/history/exhibits/curie/curie.pdf