5 ms·
Wolfram has always seemed to me to have the biggest case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome I've ever heard of. I mean, not only did he have to make his new langu
by adwf 11y ago
Wolfram has always seemed to me to have the biggest case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome I've ever heard of. I mean, not only did he have to make his new language, new search engine, etc. He even tried to make a new kind of science...
If that's not extreme NIH, I don't know what is.
- e40 11y agoRelated to this: I was at UC Berkeley in the early 80's (and did the port of Vaxima (the VAX version of Macsyma, running on Franz Lisp) to the Motorola 68000). There was definitely a rivalry between UCB and Caltech in the symbolic algebra area, and I think the "100x slower" was just an excuse to do it differently. I don't think he would have wanted to appear to be following anyone at UCB.
- coldtea 11y ago>If that's not extreme NIH, I don't know what is. Worked well for him though...
- adwf 11y agoAbsolutely; I'm not knocking his achievements. It's a rare intelligence who can work through NIH and succeed so well.
- SilasX 11y agoAgreed. I remember first reading an overview of Lisp [1], and my reaction was, "Ah, okay, just like they do in Mathematica ... ah, right, just like how Mathematica does that. Huh -- he must have done it in Lisp then." After that, I didn't even suspect it didn't use Lisp until today. [1] I think in Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas
- mseebach 11y agoWell, when "not invented here" is accompanied by "not invented anywhere else, either", we usually just call it "invented".