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Old papers are great. I have often deliberately sought out old papers to get a quick and good introduction to a subject. It doesn't always work -- sometimes a
by peterfirefly 4y ago
Old papers are great. I have often deliberately sought out old papers to get a quick and good introduction to a subject. It doesn't always work -- sometimes a newer paper with better abstractions/examples/terminology wins, of course.
I no longer know when I figured out this trick, but I have been using it for at least twenty years. I wish I had known about it earlier.
- TimPC 4y agoThere are tradeoffs. Most of the time I find terminology has drifted so substantially over time that reading old papers isn't worth the effort. I instead usually look for literature review type of papers that often have good summaries of relevant results in modern terminology.
- liketochill 4y agoI have also found old papers to be the best for learning a new concept - they make it as simple as it can be. A colleague of mine wrote a paper that proves that negative numbers exist and would often cite archimedes, Galileo, newton, etc in his bibliographies. I think he loved crediting the first person to come up with whatever idea or concept he was using.