Daniel Lemire is a computer science professor at the Data Science Laboratory of the Université du Québec (TÉLUQ) in Montreal. His research is focused on software performance and data engineering. He is a techno-optimist and a free-speech advocate.
My sayings
Originality is overrated. It is often believed that an idea is only worth pursuing if it is original. Why do something that others have already attempted? Though it is true that you should not enter a crowded market, Google was not the first nor the last search engine. Apple did not produce the first personal computer, nor even the first smart phone. Originality of its own sake is probably overrated.
Never benchmark on a laptop. Most programmers use laptops. Laptops are designed with a limited thermal envelope which means that they frequently throttle the processor, making it harder to run accurate benchmarks. It is also a broader concept: you should not evaluate an idea in a constrained setup and make broad claims about it.