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I really enjoyed Paul's compilation analogy. It reminds me of a quote by Robertson Davies. "A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and on

I really enjoyed Paul's compilation analogy. It reminds me of a quote by Robertson Davies. "A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight." It also reminds me of that MIT paper that gives advice on how to do research. The part it talks about why it is that when your colleague gives you a paper to read and says it's particularly poignant, but when you read it it doesn't seem like anything special. Maybe it's because your colleague had the dependencies in his state of mind that you did not have in yours, so it didn't seem as memorable to you as to him when the code compiled.

temuze 12y ago
Yeah, his analogy extends to art pretty well. Let's say we use Tolstoy's definition of art, that art is about communicating a feeling to others via a medium. There are times in our lives where our state of mind makes us more likely to be moved by a piece of art. It's why you should revisit your favorite books from your youth - you'll often find the same words mean completely different things later on.
icementhols 12y ago
Care to link the MIT paper ? edit: found it http://web.cs.dal.ca/~eem/gradResources/MITAIResearch.html http://web.cs.dal.ca/~eem/gradResources/MITAIResearch.html