Re: Industry versus academia

[Doug Landauer <address@hidden>]

Michael Vanier wrote:
 > I will add that another problem is that too many programmers
 > in industry are only there because they want to make
 > money, and this attitude does not generate the best hackers
 > (nothing wrong with wanting to make money, but if that's ALL
 > you care about...).

By way of helping to explain Michael's point, I offer this anecdote:

In the 1970's, UCLA had a Computer Club.  It was a thriving
community for about a decade and a half -- full of people who
were fascinated by how these new toys worked, and what you
could do with them.  By the mid-1980's, it was clear that
one of the things you could do with them was to make money.
Some time in the mid-1980's, the UCLA Computer Club had
ceased to exist.   I don't think that this was a coincidence.

My guess about the main reason is that there was that there was
no longer a rich core of people who were there purely because
of a deep and enthusiastic interest in how these things worked.

I believe that minds like these are the ones which most often
find innovative approaches -- and which make the best hackers.

IMHO, this is one of the reasons why MS is so rarely able to
do anything innovative.  Perhaps their interesting recent
FP-related research foci will start to change that a little.

  -- Doug L.