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I've recently challenged myself to read more papers related to the work I do as an engineer. It was a muscle I exercised as an undergrad but have since neglecte

I've recently challenged myself to read more papers related to the work I do as an engineer. It was a muscle I exercised as an undergrad but have since neglected in my working life. I had imagined these papers to be much, much harder to parse than they really were, the domain of proper computer scientists, but that's just silly. It's akin to how one should read a primary source over a summary -- the original text is not a mystical text beyond your comprehension; you too can engage with it and draw your own conclusions.

mad44 4y ago
> the original text is not a mystical text beyond your comprehension; you too can engage with it and draw your own conclusions. This! This is so important. Here is what I wrote (oh, wow, 10 years ago) about the process I use for reading papers. I hope it helps people. https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-i-read-research-paper.html https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-i-read-researc...
zinclozenge 4y ago
On the flip side, if you don't have the foundation it's entirely possible you won't get that much out of reading the paper. I enjoy reading papers on databases, but I also know that unless I start actively working on DB internals a lot of the lower level details of a paper will escape me. So essentially when I'm reading a paper, unless it's something I'm intimately familiar with, I stick to the high level details.