Amusing that this type of person goes unnoticed when many of us tell people what we do. I fall into this category as I was describing in another thread. What she misses is many of us aren’t rich or the work sustainable: many people in lower to middle classes sacrificing money or status to do deep research and development in a field that interests them and/or they find necessary. They might also not like the priorities of commercial or government funding groups.
For instance, I thought figuring out how to make computers that don’t fail or get hacked was a thing we desperately needed. I believed both livelihoods and lives were at stake. That we had access to them was a social good that neither the markets nor FOSS were really serving. It was also an interesting, deep, rabbit hole of a problem crossing many sub-fields of IT, economics, and psychology. That she misses people without money doing it altruistically surprises me more given she wrote the report on FOSS developers working with little to no money or contributions on critical stuff that mattered to them. Same kind of thing I think with different work output.
Still a good write-up that will draw attention to the concept. We might get more people doing it or publishing what they’re doing. I think most of us don’t publish enough. We should accept some of the troubles of that since the ideas get out there more. I also like this quote focusing on the obsessive nature of deep, independent research:
“I understand, then, why researchers flock to the safety of institutions. Imagine studying something that nobody else is studying, for reasons you can’t really articulate, without knowing what the outcome of your work will be. For the truly obsessed person, the need for validation isn’t about ego; it’s about sanity. You want to know there’s some meaning behind the dizzying mental labyrinth that you simultaneously can’t escape and also never want to leave.”
I’ve been kicking around the idea of creating a community for independent researchers. At first I thought it’d be mostly PL oriented but I’m starting to think that broadening the reach is better for both emotional support and cross-pollination of ideas. After all, it’s not like the world is teeming with independent researchers, right?
Would you (and anyone else!) be interested in this?
There are people doing research for their own private interest and are not setting out to discover anything that is not already known (but might do so accidentally). I would put people who invent new programming language sin this category.
There are people doing research to discover stuff that is not already known, or at least nothing seems to have been published anywhere).
My interest is in discovering stuff that is not yet known.
It’s an interesting idea. I probably wouldn’t join one right now given I’m too overloaded. Maybe later on.
However, it reminds me of another idea I had for CompSci where there would be a similar site having researchers at lots of universities (or independent) in forums where they could talk about stuff. Also, the non-paywalled papers would be available on it. Any new people at conferences that seemed bright would be invited. My idea was to break the silos that are hiding good ideas to facilitate cross-pollination among institutions and sub-fields.
What she misses is many of us aren’t rich or the work sustainable: many people in lower to middle classes sacrificing money or status to do deep research and development in a field that interests them and/or they find necessary. They might also not like the priorities of commercial or government funding groups.
thank you for this. as someone who gave up the salaried lifestyle to pursue open source contribution, research, and my local community, it is refreshing to hear. even among very close peers and friends, there is a huge misconception that anyone at the upper end of their technical field is comfortably making ends meet, but in reality we often live a lifestyle that more closely resembles a starving, sleep-deprived graduate research student.
I’m not wealthy, but I have a stable daily job where I mainly develop financial applications for a few international banks.
I cannot even say that my job is completely boring, as I’m often asked to fix the worst issues or to design custom developers tools.
But I face everyday the crazy complexity of modern mainstream computing. This is deeply frustrating because often such complexity emerges from the best engineering practices, correctly applied and perfectly executed but still unable to solve issues without creating subtle new ones.
Hacking Jehanne at home is a valve.
The hard thing, when you spend 14 hours programming a pc, is to preserve the humanity people around you need. I tend to become cold and too rational, while people need emotional communications too.
Also it’s annoying when people tell me that there’s no way Jehanne will replace unix, windows and the web. They are not bad people, often valuable engineers with years of experience. But they do not understand that I do not really care.
Jehanne is a gift, an act of creative curiosity.
An hack. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Research in software engineering does not need lots of hardware, the funding needed to be a gentleman scientist in this field is money to live and basic computing equipment.
The startup cost is high, after all it is necessary to be reasonably expert in the field. But again, this is the personal time needed to spend time reading a lot and gaining practical experience.
Even lower barrier than that: many bright folks that were hackers or makers that I met in rural areas were on food stamps or living with someone unemployed without a car. They could usually get a Wifi-enabled phone or old laptop that they could use at nearby McDonalds or something. Many use data plans, too, just cuz cell service is a necessity to them. At one point, I went lower having no PC, phone, or car. Designed on paper or dirt depending on where we were at.
The reading and practicing like you said is what gave us skill. I think peer review and support is just as important, though. I had lots of it once I got online. There’s quite a few people out there probably stuck on some subjects, reinventing wheels, or chasing dead ends just because they can’t talk to experienced people.
Amusing that this type of person goes unnoticed when many of us tell people what we do. I fall into this category as I was describing in another thread. What she misses is many of us aren’t rich or the work sustainable: many people in lower to middle classes sacrificing money or status to do deep research and development in a field that interests them and/or they find necessary. They might also not like the priorities of commercial or government funding groups.
For instance, I thought figuring out how to make computers that don’t fail or get hacked was a thing we desperately needed. I believed both livelihoods and lives were at stake. That we had access to them was a social good that neither the markets nor FOSS were really serving. It was also an interesting, deep, rabbit hole of a problem crossing many sub-fields of IT, economics, and psychology. That she misses people without money doing it altruistically surprises me more given she wrote the report on FOSS developers working with little to no money or contributions on critical stuff that mattered to them. Same kind of thing I think with different work output.
Still a good write-up that will draw attention to the concept. We might get more people doing it or publishing what they’re doing. I think most of us don’t publish enough. We should accept some of the troubles of that since the ideas get out there more. I also like this quote focusing on the obsessive nature of deep, independent research:
“I understand, then, why researchers flock to the safety of institutions. Imagine studying something that nobody else is studying, for reasons you can’t really articulate, without knowing what the outcome of your work will be. For the truly obsessed person, the need for validation isn’t about ego; it’s about sanity. You want to know there’s some meaning behind the dizzying mental labyrinth that you simultaneously can’t escape and also never want to leave.”
I’ve been kicking around the idea of creating a community for independent researchers. At first I thought it’d be mostly PL oriented but I’m starting to think that broadening the reach is better for both emotional support and cross-pollination of ideas. After all, it’s not like the world is teeming with independent researchers, right?
Would you (and anyone else!) be interested in this?
Such a community could be great.
There are people doing research for their own private interest and are not setting out to discover anything that is not already known (but might do so accidentally). I would put people who invent new programming language sin this category.
There are people doing research to discover stuff that is not already known, or at least nothing seems to have been published anywhere).
My interest is in discovering stuff that is not yet known.
It’s an interesting idea. I probably wouldn’t join one right now given I’m too overloaded. Maybe later on.
However, it reminds me of another idea I had for CompSci where there would be a similar site having researchers at lots of universities (or independent) in forums where they could talk about stuff. Also, the non-paywalled papers would be available on it. Any new people at conferences that seemed bright would be invited. My idea was to break the silos that are hiding good ideas to facilitate cross-pollination among institutions and sub-fields.
thank you for this. as someone who gave up the salaried lifestyle to pursue open source contribution, research, and my local community, it is refreshing to hear. even among very close peers and friends, there is a huge misconception that anyone at the upper end of their technical field is comfortably making ends meet, but in reality we often live a lifestyle that more closely resembles a starving, sleep-deprived graduate research student.
That’s basically what I do with Jehanne.
I’m not wealthy, but I have a stable daily job where I mainly develop financial applications for a few international banks.
I cannot even say that my job is completely boring, as I’m often asked to fix the worst issues or to design custom developers tools.
But I face everyday the crazy complexity of modern mainstream computing. This is deeply frustrating because often such complexity emerges from the best engineering practices, correctly applied and perfectly executed but still unable to solve issues without creating subtle new ones.
Hacking Jehanne at home is a valve.
The hard thing, when you spend 14 hours programming a pc, is to preserve the humanity people around you need. I tend to become cold and too rational, while people need emotional communications too.
Also it’s annoying when people tell me that there’s no way Jehanne will replace unix, windows and the web. They are not bad people, often valuable engineers with years of experience. But they do not understand that I do not really care.
Jehanne is a gift, an act of creative curiosity.
An hack. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Research in software engineering does not need lots of hardware, the funding needed to be a gentleman scientist in this field is money to live and basic computing equipment.
The startup cost is high, after all it is necessary to be reasonably expert in the field. But again, this is the personal time needed to spend time reading a lot and gaining practical experience.
Even lower barrier than that: many bright folks that were hackers or makers that I met in rural areas were on food stamps or living with someone unemployed without a car. They could usually get a Wifi-enabled phone or old laptop that they could use at nearby McDonalds or something. Many use data plans, too, just cuz cell service is a necessity to them. At one point, I went lower having no PC, phone, or car. Designed on paper or dirt depending on where we were at.
The reading and practicing like you said is what gave us skill. I think peer review and support is just as important, though. I had lots of it once I got online. There’s quite a few people out there probably stuck on some subjects, reinventing wheels, or chasing dead ends just because they can’t talk to experienced people.