you should have read this http://g-ravi-ty.blogspot.com/2010/10/innovation-vs-invention.html before you read the following. The italics are my answers to the non-italics :)
Fantastic! I was waiting for this. I wanted some CS guy to get angry with what I posted which is why I made sure my post is ambiguous compared to my usual posts. If you notice the title is not apt.
There are lots of things in this post that I as a CSE student take offense to - (note that I use *CSE* - Science and Engineering, and I do believe nobody combines the aspects of pure science research with systems engineering as well as my discipline does, so CSE is justified)
I did not want to hurt CS guys but I wanted them to take offense to get hot replies like this. Actually this is the perfect setting for my next blog post(probably posts from the comments I see here).I am sorry it was that nasty.
0. Extremely wrong to put "(computer science)" as an alias for programming. Go through the CS section in the BTech Curriculum book and you will see how little of naive programming is mentioned in there. Most of CSE deals with pure research like theoretical CS or systems like network and programming is just a means a to an ends, though it is a very important means.
What you said is damn right! - I have been through the curriculum. I am one of the very few guys who took courses from all branches. I did 6 out of my 7 mtech electives outside my branch-had to almost con my fac ad for that. He was ranting"Ravikanth, you cant get mtech in Aerosopace Engineering by doing courses from other branches which are not even related to this!":P In the first paragraph I was not talking anything about invention or innovation or programming or CSE! I was really talking about my screwed up experience with programming because of my wrong opinion about it. This paragraph had two purposes one is to get your attention and the other is to entice/provoke you(CS guys to be frank) to comment on the rest of my post.
1. Programming is _not_ engineering. Just like other branches, CSE also lays importance on programming as a _tool_, not as engineering in itself. A typical CSE course does include _software_ engineering, but thats only from the point of view of how to design, maintain and work with such a large scale system (the system in this case being millions of lines of code and complex modules interacting with each other).
Agreed. its a tool. I told you I was enticing you. You fell for my classic prank Ravinga. Ok that did not work. Please dont give that stern look-it scares me out. smile please :)
2. Google (representative of search engines) is not an invention ? I really suggest you read up more about the history and complexity of search engines before coming up with a line like that. Think of the sheer complexity of dealing with data of the order thats much larger than 10^18 and finding the exact match for 1-2 search terms in the order of microseconds time. If you look at it closely, there are an insane number of systems design issues that come into picture. If you were to look at it as a large-scale engineering system, my guess is that complexity wise Google should rate on par with (or higher than) the largest factories/refineries/plants ever.
This is the real meat(or pani puri if u dont eat meat). The idea of google is a search engine. who does 'not know/figure out' that a search engine is of great use? I also know that there were search engines before google- . I also know that they sucked big time which is why google was a hit compared to the thers. I am not talking about what it takes to build something as awesome as google. I am not talking about the complexity involved. I am talking about the idea of a search engine.
It is far easier to build a cycle after you get convinced that it can be done. It is orders of magnitude tougher to build a search engine like google even if you come up with the idea of search engine. BUT the idea of google/search engine is something any idiot can come up with.
3. About Facebook again,one indicator I would suggest you to look at is the amount of research funding across the world that is going into social networks - you will be amazed. From among the millions of user accounts that Facebook stores on its servers, how is it able to fetch updates of your friends in no time at all and display when your page loads ?
SO is the idea of social networking. I am not even talking about CS! CSE is the means to enable social networking. I am talking about the idea of social networking. If you notice I am on your side :P
4. Finally, just dont under-estimate something because its *not physical* (as is the case with most comp sci stuff) or the concept appears simple on the face of it. Your post is a classic example to explain why CSE rocks - it deals bests with abstractions, providing solutions to the most complicated problems of the world yet abstracting the gory details out in such a way that the layman never realizes the extent of whats happening and feels there is nothing in there at all. The very reason to why its such a celebrated field is that underneath those layers of abstraction lie complex systems and solid theoretical research.
Thank you for the advice. I wish someone has given that to me before the end of my second year. I already know this right now. It is not just CSE! Any field of science/engineering is like that. Who is going to buy a metal piece of which weighs as much as Airbus A380 for 20,000 crores? If you know someone who does I want to know I am interested in selling him :P
On a related but a different note I would like to mention a quote of my prof "If you cannot appreciate a field of study it does not mean that field of study is stupid it means that you are not smart enough to appreciate it"
PS: I would be glad to provide more examples (ever wondered about how banks manage to combine ATM+mobile banking+internet transactions into a single interface dealing with millions of people and yet never messing up your account balances?) - not sure if you are interested though.
Yes, I am a CSE fanatic.
sure. Actually I am interested :)
October 22, 2010 4:12 PM
kirtika said...
Wikipedia describes -"Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries" and Invention as the process of coming up with something new. If you look at it, the PageRank algorithm Google uses was a big *invention* by the founders, who were then CSE PhDs students. The Google search engine itself is the pot-pourri of not one, but hundreds of such inventions.
Pagerank algorithm is a different idea kirthika! I dont know enough about it but is probably better than google itself. Google stands on search engine. Facebook stands on social networking. Even before facebook came people were social networking. Even before google came people were searching. Even before cycle came people were locomoting. There were search engines before google. It is highly possible that there were social networking sites before facebook- I didnt check. There were no cycles before macmillan invented one.
Google and facebook made searching and social networking FAAAAAAAAAAR more easier. Every body appreciates that - I use facebook and google daily. who doesnt?
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I guess she is trying to tell you that google and fb are as much an invention as a bicycle is. As a CSE student she has a full appreciation of those inventions as you have of a bicycle invention. The need for locomotion is also an obvious idea. Am sure she appreciates the great mind behind a bicycle. I can't tell if u can still appreciate whatever went behind google. If I take a step back and see.. It looks to me that you are comparing two very different things.
ReplyDeletePS: Get over yourself. The comeback is quite lame.