Here’s an old quote that’s worth repeating from time to time:

People like me need to do things in order to understand. That’s why I build systems. That’s why I tinker. That’s why I read so much.
(Jim Gray, IEEE Distributed Systems Online 2004)

Short story: research is not about spending time in the library. And it is not about solving problems either. Research is about building crazy new things.

2 Comments »

  1. [...] a bit here: Jim Gray missing at sea, What is infinite storage? , Science in an exponential world, That’s why I tinker, A “Measure of Transaction Processing” 20 Years Later, ACM Queue – A Conversation with Tim [...]

    Pingback by UC Berkeley holding tribute for Jim Gray — 16/11/2007 @ 8:49

  2. [...] See also my posts My research process and That’s why I tinker. [...]

    Pingback by Directed research is useless — 19/11/2007 @ 18:42

Leave a comment

Warning: When entering a long comment, please ensure that you make copy of your text prior to submitting it. If the server should fail or if you hit a bug, you might lose your work. I am not responsible for your lost effort.

To spammers: I carefully review every single post and make sure that spam gets deleted. You are wasting your time if you are manually entering spam using this form. Read my terms of use to see what I consider to be abusive.

Example: duo plus septem is '9'. The numbers are expressed in latin numerals but you should give your answers using ordinary digits.

 

« « Previous: Career Swings
Next: More measure of impact factors for CS conferences » »

« Blog's main page

Powered by WordPress

© 2004-2012, (lemire at gmail dot com). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.