Why read old philosophy? - <AUTHOR> https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/why-read-old-philosophy/amp/ <comment> charles-salvia I realize there's a (stereotypical) tendency for scientists and engineers to look down on philosophy - and I think this tendency colors this whole discussion to the extent that it almost borders on being a touchy subject.

But a lot of the claims about the uselessness of philosophy in the modern world are probably based around the fact that, at least from the perspective of an Ancient Greek like Aristotle, there was _no_ actual distinction between "science" and "philosophy". It was all just _sophia_ (wisdom) to him. It was applying abstract inductive reasoning to arrive at universal truths.

And this is patently obvious from simply reading Aristotle or the Pre- Socratics. These writers routinely make what modern readers would consider outright _scientific_ claims. A lot of what Aristotle wrote is testable and falsifiable, and has indeed been falsified. But to Aristotle there wasn't any inherent epistemological difference between reasoning about physics and reasoning about justice. But today, we clearly separate these two spheres via _empiricism_ \- a method of thinking that wasn't really available to the Ancient Greeks, because it wouldn't be truly appreciated as part of a formal, scientific method, until the Medieval Arabs and later the European Renaissance thinkers really formalized it.

So in that sense, it's understandable why some modern students might find reading Aristotle as silly as reading, say, a Medieval book about medicine or alchemy.

I would argue, however, that Aristotle (and many of the ancient philosophers) are actually very valuable to read precisely because of their historical impact, and how their works shaped the course of human thought for millennia. Aristotle's particular ideas about physics might be hopelessly wrong, but his thought processes and writings influenced Europe and the Middle East throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. It is therefore critically important to have a good understanding of Ancient Greek philosophy if you are to have any hope of understanding the history of Western thought in general.

<comment><USER2> Ancient Greek is stained by history - it was the only science taught in Universities for what? a thousand years. That's the catch - its revered beyond all reason due to history. Simultaneously its old-fashioned and outdated for the same reason. Hard to disentangle the two.

I read the Philosophers in College. But I cannot imagine I would ever again pick up a book of Ancient Greek Philosophy. There's just nowhere to go from that stuff. Informative as history, and as an intro to the subject. But I been there; done that.

<comment><USER3> > _Ancient Greek is stained by history - it was the only science taught in > Universities for what? a thousand years. That 's the catch - its revered > beyond all reason due to history._

That's reversing cause and effect. It's not a mere accident of history that it was "taught in Universities for a thousand years".

> _But I cannot imagine I would ever again pick up a book of Ancient Greek > Philosophy. There 's just nowhere to go from that stuff_

Actually it's one of the best investments in one's personal development and understanding of the world they could make.

Physical philosophy aside, philosophy, like arts, doesn't get deprecated over time. Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, etc are as relevant as they ever were.

<comment><USER2> Sure it was. It was all they had for 'science' for a thousand years. Something about the 'dark ages'.

And, as stated above, been there and done that.

<comment><USER3> > _Sure it was. It was all they had for 'science' for a thousand years. > Something about the 'dark ages'_

There was not much "dark" about the dark ages (as 20th and 21st century scholarly research increasingly showed), and what little was was due to the collapse of a huge organized empire, not because because "that was all they had for science" (I guess "that" being Aristotle).

In any case, this is an extremely shallow assessment of the role of philosophy -- like someone reading Cliff Notes on Shakespeare and thinking they got all there is to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not convinced by the author's argument. The difference between philosophy and physics is that _old philosophical arguments do not become less correct over time_. In physics, later physicists build on the earlier body of knowledge and refine it, making it more correct. In philosophy, later philosophers may suggest a counterargument to the early philosopher, but as philosophy does not normally deal in absolutes it is impossible to say the later philosopher is now more correct and worth reading instead of the earlier philosopher.

For example: a philosopher may argue that murder is morally wrong, and a later philosopher may argue that murder is morally right. Neither answer is factually wrong or right. We should therefore read the work of both philosophers to get the most value out of our studies and to form our own opinions.

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I'd also argue that it's not always worth reading the earlier philosopher's work if someone else can rewrite it in a better form. Personally I think Immanuel Kant's philosophy is interesting but poorly written, and you'd get more value out of reading a later text about his philosophy that his works himself.

Other writers such as Plato have stood the test of time and are worth reading (assuming you have a good translation).

<comment><USER5> You're generally right, but I take issue with the claims: "philosophy does not normally deal in absolutes it is impossible to say the later philosopher is now more correct and worth reading instead of the earlier philosopher" and "Neither answer is factually wrong or right".

I hope you and everyone else realizes that these are philosophical claims, and controversial ones at that!

I would tenatively assert that the majority of philosophers now and in the past have believed the following two things: 1) moral statements like "murder is wrong" are objectively true or false. 2) philosophical statements are also objectively true or false.

(Note that I say "objective", not "factual" as some people would make a distinction between the two, as in the fact-value distinction).

Like any philosophical issue, there is a lot of debate. But when characterizing what philosophers think, how philosophers act, you have to make clear what's your own view, as opposed to settled fact.

That said, I agree with you the central claim that the works of historical philosophers are often of equal or greater insight than contemporary work.

<comment><USER6> > moral statements like "murder is wrong" are objectively true or false

That is an incredibly controversial statement... Moral relativism much?

<comment><USER5> I pretty clearly said it was controversial, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

That said, moral relativism has a very low status in philosophy. Many philosophers think it is simply incoherent (the fifth paragraph here dances around one reason: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral- relativism/#MetMorR...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral- relativism/#MetMorRel)).

It is much more common for philosophers to hold that there simply are no moral facts, or that moral statements are merely expressions of approval or disapproval, or some similar position ([https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral- cognitivism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is not a very good article. Like a lot of writers in the Lesswrong- rationalist sphere, the author is very smart and describes her thought process in great detail, but has too many erroneous premises and ends up with wrong conclusions.

I understand her conclusion as "people study old philosophers, not to learn about their views, but to learn about their thinking techniques". In contrast, I would say that the primary reason for studying old philosophers first-hand is to properly understand philosophy.

(I wouldn't start by studying the old philosophers - I would start by reading modern summaries, especially those that focus on the actual philosophical problems. Study the old philosophers only if you want a full understanding).

You have to understand what philosophy is. It's studying the fundamental nature of reality and our thoughts about it. When you get down to fundamental issues, there are often a very small number of plausible answers, and much of philosophy is extrapolating the consequences of those answers. These issues are timeless and still relevant.

The pervasive modern belief is that philosophy is mostly meaningless word- games that can be dismissed, and science should be the basis of everything. But collecting more observations of reality does not help answer these questions. Furthermore, without knowledge of the implications of certain answers, you easily wind up advocating positions that don't actually hold up. (E.g., many people think neuroscience has disproved the existence of consciousness, when all it has proved is that consciousness is closely related to the brain).

Like Katja, I used to follow Lesswrong-style rationalism, but after studying different philosophies I concluded that Objectivism made the most sense. (Whatever you may have heard about Ayn Rand, I recommend evaluating her views for yourself). Leonard Peikoff gave an excellent and comprehensive course on the history of philosophy from an Objectivist POV: [https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of- philoso...](https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of-philosophy)

<comment><USER8> I'd recommend a classical treatment of presocratic philosophy. I'm watching the Heraclitus episode and he completely misrepresents him. The sparseness of fragments that remain make it very easy to read into them what you like, and that is exactly what happens here.

<comment><USER9> "Complete misrepresentation" of philosophers (and, well, everything else) is probably to be expected with Peikoff around. He has made his bones on Objectivism being a closed system, the incentives he's got necessitate doing a lot of rearranging of reality when he's doing his preaching. And "preaching" is chosen specifically; he is a megachurcher with a different bible.

I have no use for David Kelley, like I have no professional, personal, moral or ethical use for any Objectivist (if I dropped my wallet around an Objectivist I'd have to think about kicking one home before I bent down to get it, just to be safe), but that Peikoff tried to tell him and his adherents to leave the "Objectivist Movement" because they didn't think philosophy started and stopped with Ayn Rand, because they didn't think that you have to "revere" [Peikoff's word] Rand, because they didn't think it was impossible to consider as potentially valid or edifying other systems (be they Marxism or libertarianism) that had the temerity to not put Ayn Rand on an altar...well, it's telling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why read old philosophy? Why not read the work that's created now?

Why study programming languages? Why not just use the best programming language?

Just as we don't know or agree about the best programming language (or we admit there's no "best" for every purpose), one answer is that the ancients may be right.

That's a fine answer, but I think it's actually secondary. Just as you don't have to think a programming language is the best to want to learn about it, you don't have to think the ancients were right to study them.

What studying other programming languages/older philosophers gives you is insight into the different ways you can formulate ideas or see the world.

It's a struggle to enter into a new way of thinking, much harder than learning a new programming language. You have a tremendous number of assumptions that you can't even state that interfere with your understanding. When you start out, a historical philosopher often either looks incomprehensible, or like a modern who is constantly wrong.

With enough work you can come to understand how that philosopher conceived the world, so that their arguments begin to make sense.

Those different ways of seeing the world are themselves of philosophical value, but they also help you understand how our contemporary understanding arose, and therefore also help you understand which aspects of our contemporary understanding are accidents or optional.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting article, and I agree that a lot of the reason for reading old philosophy is so that you know how philosophers should think and argue.

But I always thought there was another practical reason - old philosophy is referenced all the time in newer philosophy - you have to read the older stuff to kind of learn the "language" of philosophy with all of the issues that have been covered and are still being covered.

Plus, old philosophy isn't necessarily irrelevant to contemporary ideas - Pre- socratics had theorized about atoms, for example. Or it's not like ethics, epistemology, or phenomenology will suddenly become irrelevant, though theories surrounding them might change a little bit and be refined and lose references to god.

<comment><USER11> > But I always thought there was another practical reason - old philosophy is > referenced all the time in newer philosophy - you have to read the older > stuff to kind of learn the "language" of philosophy with all of the issues > that have been covered and are still being covered.

Sorry to disagree, but that's a "just so" argument: you have to do this because everybody else does. She asks, "why _does_ everybody else do this?" which is a good question.

My thoughts on this are in another long comment on a different thread so I won't waste your time by pasting them again here.

<comment><USER5> Not at all: if other people reference old philosophy, you may need to understand old philosophy in order to understand them, regardless of whether or not they should be referencing old philosophy.

Compare: if there is a guy speaking French to you in the US, you need to understand French to understand him, even if it would be a whole lot more effective for him to speak English.

<comment><USER11> Sure, what you say is true but that's not the question she raises. Yours is simply a functional question. A very useful question, but not an insightful one.

To reframe her question with your example, she's asking: "Everyone says I should learn to write French to talk to French people. But the French froze their spelling in the 17th century, while languages like English and German have modernized their spelling. Why should the French be different?"

 _That_ is an interesting question. Hers is also: why is philosophy treated differently from, say, Physics in this regard?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> During my first year as a student at University I stumbled upon the book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke in the philosophy section. It was the critical edition by Peter Nidditch, beautifully typeset and bound. I flipped through it and the style of English looked intriguing so I took the book out.

I spent about a month reading through it and when I finally finished it I felt like it had profoundly changed my way of thinking and moved me deeply.

It also made me never want to read another "summary" or anything but the original work of a philosopher ever again. It's very hard to explain or understand if you haven't experienced it yourself.

I feel the same way after reading Schopenhauer, although I've never had the privilege of reading him in German. The translations by Saunders is so amazingly good in English and I've read that Schopenhauer's German is a real delight, so I can't even imagine how good it must be to read him in the original. But I imagine it would be something as beautiful and touching as Locke if you're a native English speaker.

<comment><USER13> German is very suitable for abstract thinking because you can form compound words with ease and put the function at the end of the sentence. These compound words are hard to translate (aufhebung - sublation is a famous example). Hegel wrote about this in his Logic. German is like a different programming paradigm compared to English.

<comment><USER14> That is a very Whorfian view, but McWhorter, among others, would question whether it is at all plausible that these differences in what is little more than syntax can really make a profound difference in meaning. To put it another way, if these language features do make that much of a difference, then is there much more to these texts than a self-referential discussion of the meaning of the language used in these texts?

Your programming-paradigm analogy is perhaps unintentionally apt, as underneath their particular representations, they are all Turing-equivalent.

<comment><USER15> Program languages can be Turing equivalent however an alternative view of language is its like any other data encoding and via some kinds of Shannon's Law for human speech your language has to be able to achieve a certain SNR equivalent minimum to get an idea across in a small slice of a lifetime devoted to a book at a reasonably low enough error rate to claim a meeting of the minds on a topic. So you can write Kant in German and maybe its possible to understand an English translation of Kant with a bit more effort but there exists a hard lower SNR limit below which it doesnt work such that a Lojban translation of Kant is simply a fliba. Note that its difficult to find a Lojban-English dictionary that isn't also an English thesaurus in practice. There are indications Kant could be translated into Esperanto but nobodies tried in public, or maybe because its also quite impossible.

Now as a counter example (or is it?) see the whole concept of "a quran isn't a quran unless its written in arabic at which point its a real quran" vs the similar fun the pre-reformation christians had with the same belief WRT the new testament.

<comment><USER14> That is a very interesting point, but I wonder if Lojban's avoidance of ambiguity is the root of the translation difficulty - I doubt that Kant is unambiguous.

I think the quran and new testament issues arise from theology, not linguistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a philosophy Philosophy PhD student. There can be a number of different reasons to read the original text of some older work of philosophy. But two central reasons that seem to be ignored here are:

1\. Philosophy is closer to logic/math than science. And the reason to learn 'what Aristotle said about X' is similar to the reason to learn 'what Pythagoras said about triangles'. The pythagorean theorem doesn't become outdated in the way that scientific knowledge becomes outdated. (The difference here is just between a priori and a posteriori domains of knowledge.)

2\. Explaining philosophical reasoning is, itself, doing philosophy--it requires careful reasoning and argumentation. The central thing we do (in UC Berkeley Philosophy classes) is evaluate philosophical reasoning. And so you can't simply rely on some interpreter's take on the original text--you must grapple with it yourself. Sometimes interpreters _do_ get things right, but sometime's they _don 't_. And telling the difference requires doing some philosophy.

<comment><USER17> About 1:

Only a small groups of researches of mathematical history reads what exactly Pythagoras said about triangles, in mainstream mathematics people just have a general idea of the results of Pythagoras or some rehash of his ideas and a few later/former mathematicians. Moreover, most theorems names are misattributed. The name of Pythagoras is more a nice historical anecdote about triangles and the equation x^2+y^2=z^2. Moreover, IIRC none of his books have survived. It's just a mix of folklore and indirect sources.

A better example is the work of Euclid. He wrote some books and some copies survived and you can still read them. Anyway, most mathematician don't read them, they have only a general idea of what Euclid wrote. I'm not sure what parts of his books were original and what parts were only a recompilation of the common knowledge of his time. He had a very interesting idea. You can choose some sensible axioms and derive all the geometry from them. [Whatever sensible means.] This idea survived, but the axioms he choose were wrong. Some are confusing, there are some missing cases ... IIRC with the Euclid's axioms you don't get the "real plane" with all it's points of , you can use them in a smaller plane were x and y are algebraic numbers, like fractions and square roots, ... but the point (x=pi, y=e) doesn't exist. IIRC the modern versions of axiomatic geometry use about 20 axioms, and some are very technical.

With most people like Gauss or Euler gets a few theorems named after them and a few anecdotes, but most mathematicians don't read the original material.

In some cases, it's nice to see as a curiosity a copy of the original publication. IIRC there are some copies of the work of Newton, Leibnitz or Cauchy were you can see that the notation they used is very similar to the current notation.

In other cases, the following mathematicians buried completely the original work and only the original name remains but most of the intermediate steps and notation are not made by the original author. IIRC all what you usually study about Galois theory is actually the version that was written later by Artin and Noether.

<comment><USER18> I didn't read your whole post but I think I agree with your point which I would phrase as saying that:

In mathematics (and science) it doesn't matter much what the researchers thought; the ideas stand on their own. So we shouldn't study Plato, but it would be good to study his ideas which are still relevant and insightful.

<comment><USER19> I'm not a mathematician of physicist, but I suspect that these disciplines are ahistorical largely out of necessity. They now require the grasp of so much technical material that there simply isn't time to teach the history of the discipline. I see no reason to think that this is a particularly good thing.

<comment><USER18> Somehow you are implying that philosophy is so simple all the material can be covered, so there is time to study the history?

What's important is understanding. If studying the history aids understanding it might be worth the time.

I believe studying the history in physics impedes understanding, because it builds up mistaken ideas that become hard to tear down.

For philosophy I'm not sure but I suspect it's better to order learning so as to make a logical progression and that isn't the same as the historical order.

<comment><USER19> I didn't mean it as a dig at philosophy for being simple. But I think it's true that there is less "essential technical material" to cover in philosophy. There's no equivalent to spending 3 months practicing solving differential equations.

>I believe studying the history in physics impedes understanding, because it builds up mistaken ideas that become hard to tear down.

This can be true in some cases of course, but there are also good ideas that get forgotten about or become unfashionable. And without studying the history of the discipline, you will often end up rejecting straw man versions of historical ideas rather than the ideas themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "This concern with aim or results, with differentiating and passing judgement on various thinkers is therefore an easier task than it might seem. For instead of getting involved in the real issue, this kind of activity is always away beyond it; instead of tarrying with it, and losing itself in it, "this kind of knowing is forever grasping at something new; it remains essentially preoccupied with itself instead of being preoccupied with the real issue and surrendering to it. To judge a thing that has substance and solid worth is quite easy, to comprehend it is much harder, and to blend judgement and comprehension in a definitive description is the hardest thing of all."

Excerpt From: G. W. F. Hegel. "Phenomenology of Spirit." Oxford University Press.

<comment><USER20> My best philosophy reads were almost always when I felt connected to the writer. They mostly all talk straight to the reader, but that doesn't mean I'm always feeling on the same level as them. But when I do it's like A close friend is telling me a story and I can understand their mind's machinations.

Hegels quote there is why I never spoke up in philosophy class. The other students would hear the tone of my voice or maybe the first 3 words out of my mouth and nothing else. They'd respond to fewer. It made me feel alienated.

As for why people should read philosophers: to learn. You can learn about wild individuality through Thoreau and Ed Abbey. Ethics from Kant, Aristotle, and many others. Life, death, and the meaning of both from many. We all have lives to lead and philosophers can help in the day to day and the big struggles.

Oh and the Socratic method is worth it, too.

<comment><USER13> I feel somewhat similar.. on a side note Hegel's way of thinking is very "algorhythmical". For example the art of the metaobject protocol explores common lisp in a similar way as Hegel explores the absolute spirit. Hegel is a macrologist par excellance!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have an old, leather bound "History of Philosophy" text from Harvard Press - printed around 1913, I seem to remember. It's about 1200 onion-skin thin partially transparent pages. I have it sealed in an air tight bag in a strong box now, but back in the mid 80's (during my undergrad fascination with Existentialism) I read most of the book. My favorite is Ionian philosophy, the first humans to try to reasoning about their world, and they concluded that the Gods were both evil and insane, the world is their navel, and we are the lint inside. Literally.

<comment><USER22> Amy idea who the author is?

<comment><USER21> Looks like many authors, the binding says "Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy" and "Harvard Press". Inside it says published 1923; I got the date wrong above. It's very fragile now...

<comment><USER22> With a date like that, it should be out of copyright. But I can't find it in any of the usual sources. I'll keep an eye out, though.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A professor of Marxist political philosophy at my university told our introductory course that the point of (political, at least) philosophy wasn't to learn the philosopher's ideas on how to fix his world but rather how his thought process could be used to analyze and fix ours. I don't remember much else from the course but that bit has stuck for all these years.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like he was quoting Marx himself

> The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point > is to change it.

<comment><USER23> Haha, could well have been. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Towards the end:

> This doesn't explain why philosophy is different to physics (and basically > all of the other subjects). Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not > like Newton?

And I don't feel convinced the author has an answer.

<comment><USER11> She walks up to it but doesn't get there (yet -- it doesn't sound like she's read much philosophy yet).

All other disciplines have split off / descended from philosophy (not just in the case of western/Greek philosophy) because "philosophy" essentially just means "science". I say "disciplines" because I mean the formal study of action; thus I include Engineering in this (the Greeks recognized a difference between tradecraft (techne) and theory of which modern engineering is the amalgam). She clearly hasn't yet been exposed to this (she writes, "The story I hear about philosophy—and I actually don't know how much it is true—is that as bits of philosophy come to have any methodological tools other than 'think about it', they break off and become their own sciences."). This is precisely true, yet wrong!

Think of it as abstraction: chemistry and physics broke off semi- independently; they are clearly highly related disciplines; yet trying to work with chemistry solely at the subatomic level would be a disaster. Likewise biology and ecology. I can very well believe that there are very interesting quantum sensing phenomena involved in how, say, a group of pitcher plants lure insects, phenomena which are very important to the integrity of the rainforest; yet trying to save it by working at that level would be futile.

It's better to think of chemistry, physics, ecology, and religion as technologies (trades) and work with them. They practical use has shifted from the brain to the hand. These fields still have useful roots in philosophy and can make valuable use of "traditional" philosophical tools. For example it's clear that almost all (but not 100%!) of the arguments against worrying about anthropomorphic global climate change are made by people who have a very limited understanding of epistemology, which is probably the most important subject to understand for anyone in the practical sciences.

Which brings her to the second part of her answer, which she also gives: "...suggest that in physics students are maybe missing out on learning the styles of thought that produce progress in physics.... might partially explain why Nobel prizewinner advisors beget Nobel prizewinner students." Well, umm, yes. If you study under someone who works on "X" you'll become skilled in "X". If your goal is the areas in which the Nobel committee award prizes, yes, this can help. But the problem is broader than that and applies to all disciplines. If you want to become a master craftsperson/artist like Noguchi, you should study under him (except he's dead) -- not to duplicate his work but to understand how he _thought_.

This is no different in programming: we read others' code to learn how to think about programming. There are still many gems in the old literature, overlooked by cultural stigma.

In fact the characterization of "old" is a misnomer. In my professional life I have frequently had recourse to Wittgenstein, Heidigger and Plato (sorry, I don't like Aristotle) and they are not only useful in shaping my direct work but when discussing it with coworkers -- essentially this understanding itself forms a techne.

<comment><USER26> Dare I hope "arguments against _anthropomorphic_ global climate change" was not a typo? If not, please share!

<comment><USER11> Ha ha good catch. I tried to think of a witty explanation but kept laughing. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I haven't read a ton of philosophy, but I'm almost always surprised by how different the original is from the interpretations. People are weird and surprising. Textbook explanations smooth out the rough edges. And they always take out the jokes.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's worth noting that philosophy grad school is not necessarily focused on history. I went to Pitt (philosophy, not History and Philosophy of Science), which is arguably a department dominated by Kantians and Aristotelians, and in general people who care a lot about the history of philosophy, and the requirement was still 3 historical courses (1 modern, 1 ancient, 1 of either) out of the 12 courses needed for comprehensive evaluation.

Also, not all contemporary philosophers like history. There are plenty who think that the philosophy worth worrying about starts sometime around Quine, or maybe David Lewis. I think they're wrong, but they're out there.

</comment><comment><USER28> There are so many reasons to read philosophy none of them have to do with philosophy as such.

Just because you know a lot about philosophy does not make you a great philosopher. But what reading philosophy do IF you are able to combine it with other skills is to provide you with an ability to think about what you do in a differen perspective.

The actual questions as interesting but not as such why you should read philosophy. You should read it because you want to have another perspective to think about what you do.

</comment><comment><USER29> You know how, when your opinionated uncle reads a very high level description of some tech thing you know a lot about and then tells you how it will or won't work, you kind of sigh and don't even bother to try to explain just how much he doesn't know about the subject? Engineers who've taken a few philosophy undergrad courses should keep that in mind when drawing broad conclusions about philosophy. I'm not saying you shouldn't opine, but I'd suggest doing so with the appropriate amount of humility.

<comment><USER30> Having done a philosophy degree and been a programmer, in my opinion you're adding far too much weight to what is a very easy domain to understand. All the complicated bits became their own discipline (maths/physics/chemistry/social science/psychology).

Philosophy's not particularly complicated to someone who understands basic logic.

In some ways it's not a real subject as there's nothing to study as it's all thought experiments. There's no weird data mucking up elegant theories, or strange earth movements, or bizarre lights patterns.

These days philosophy tends to be just an argument about what a word actually means.

It's certainly nothing like a programmer dabbling in maths and claiming they've solved p v np.

<comment><USER29> This is one of those moments when you sigh and don't bother. If you've done an undergrad in philosophy and still don't think there are parts which aren't very sophisticated and difficult, we'll... Sigh.

<comment><USER30> This is one of those moments when you wonder why someone bothered to reply without mentioning a single one of these "sophisticated and difficult" parts of philosophy that we could then happily explain in simple terms. You only had to mention a single name or sub-discipline.

For example one of my modules was philosophy of mathematics. It was sophisticated and difficult, but not complicated or meaningful.

It was just a fairly pointless thought experiment. The actual important bits are just called "mathematics".

It's like today's social science. It's an extension of moral and political philosophy. But moral and political philosophy are fairly pointless and get bogged down by fairly meaningless arguments about the meaning of "self" or "altruism", while social science attempts to make people's lives better.

You know, I studied 3 separate modules on formal logic. I did 36 hours worth of lectures, wrote various essays and read multiple expensive philosophy text books.

I learnt more about logic from a single 1 hour high school electronics lesson than I ever did from all that.

pg has a good essay about why he doesn't particularly rate philosophy: [http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)

<comment><USER29> Pick one:

1\. There's something you missed along the way and thus you fail to appreciate the complexity of the issues.

2\. You're considerably more intelligent than the hundreds of thousands of very intelligent people who struggle with the issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The author seems to take the goal of studying philosophy to be knowledge/technique collection, for an eventual goal of some type of measurable output. In other words, she expects philosophy to have something in common with the study of physics that it just doesn't have. One reads Plato (for example), not to collect facts about the world, but because Plato's Socrates still represents one of the most noteworthy and admirable ways of being towards the world. You read Plato to learn how to comport yourself better towards death, injustice, and most of all, your own ignorance.

The bias I'm trying to get at is shown here: > And if philosophy is about having certain experiences, like poetry, but then it would seem to be a kind of entertainment rather than a project to gain knowledge, which is at least not what most philosophers would tell you.

Dividing experience into "knowledge" and "entertainment" belies an ignorance of much of the subject matter Plato treats. Many works of ancient philosophy are still some of the most worthwhile texts to read because they are education in how to live. They represent some of the most admirable and imitable responses to the puzzle/experience of being a fragile creature who knows that it will die but doesn't know why it's here nor quite how to find out. Scientific inquiry can treat "why" questions when we understand "why" to mean "by what means?" but not when we understand "why" to mean "for the sake of what?" Many today would contend that "why" questions in the latter sense are not meaningful nor admit of answers, and you can't present empirical data in rebuttal, nor do much else besides try to inspire a sense of skepticism about their broadest assumptions, habits, etc. And encourage them to read Plato.

As others have observed, many of Aristotle's scientific claims have been falsified, and personally I didn't get much out of reading his Physics. But the Nic. Ethics made a permanent change in the way I think and feel, in part because it revealed to me how incomplete and shallow my justifications about ethics had been my whole life, and that a coherent way of thinking about ethics was possible.

Also, studying the history of philosophy and philosophy of science are the best ways to become aware of the (often questionable) philosophical assumptions that underlie the contemporary scientistic attitude towards knowledge.

<comment><USER31> This section stuck out to me also:

> Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not like Newton? Especially > since Newton had more to show for his thoughts than an account of what his > thoughts were like. I suspect the difference is that because physicists > invent explicit machinery that can be easily taught, when you learn physics > you spend your time mastering these tools. And perhaps in the process, you > come to think in a way that fits well with these tools. Whereas in > philosophy there is much less in the way of explicit methods to learn, so > the most natural thing to learn is how to do whatever mental processes > produce good philosophy.

The notion of having "more to show" is beside the point. The goal of philosophy can not be described as "producing good philosophy." The goal, at least for many of the ancients both in and outside Greece, is coming to know the truth, possessing wisdom, but not in the sense of holding in mind a set of facts about the world. It is a goal of reconciling oneself to the world, reaching the best understanding of how to live and think properly that is available to human beings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> As an undergrad there was a brief point where I got really into philosophy i.e. its core disciplines such as metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, because I had never encountered it before but after about a year and a half I got completely sick of all the confused vagueness and have never returned.

The impracticality of the whole discipline is what frustrated me in the end, and is why all my free reading to this day is about maths, physics, engineering, computer science, etc. topics that are applicable in the real world and help me solve problems. I suppose that if you plop logic, game theory, and enough other formal science disciplines under the philosophy rubric you can make philosophy seem more reasonable but to me that's just mathematics and you're fooling yourself calling it philosophy.

I know many will disagree, but IMO there is hardly a discipline more pointless than philosophy, its continually losing ground to science in every area and its methods are questionable at best i.e. armchair I think its so so its so.

<comment><USER4> > its continually losing ground to science in every area and its methods are > questionable at best

Philosophy is a very broad school and many areas do not lose out to science. While science helps answer such things as the free will debate, it cannot answer the question of morality or the debate over how to govern society correctly.

Often science can bring us closer to understanding the world but not provide an answer on how to act. The classic example is abortion. Science can tell us when the heartbeat starts, or brainwaves begin firing, or when we feel pain; but it cannot begin to answer whether it is ok to take a life before/after any of those biological points - that is where philosophy comes in.

I'd go as far as arguing that it is one of the most practical disciplines. It gave me answers on how to act rather than relying on pure feeling. Too many of us support the same political parties as our parents or having the same moral code as our peers, without questioning whether that is actually the ideal way to act. These philosophical arguments go to the heart of society, morality, politics and law.

<comment> charles-salvia Science can settle (or at least inform) a debate over how to govern society correctly _if_ you define certain tangible features or goals that a correct society should have. If you agree upfront that a correct society should seek to e.g. maximize individual happiness, or maximize economic output, or whatever, there are scientific arguments that would support one policy over another.

It's also worth noting that a lot of what Aristotle (as opposed to Plato) as well as many of the Pre-Socratics actually wrote about would today be considered scientific topics. Aristotle speculated about physics and natural systems using abstract reasoning. Many of his conclusions are empirically falsifiable and have been falsified. It's simply that empiricism itself as an epistemological tool had not yet been fully appreciated in Classical Greece.

<comment><USER33> > If you agree upfront that a correct society should seek to e.g. maximize > individual happiness, or maximize economic output, or whatever, there are > scientific arguments that would support one policy over another.

And that's the key. How do you define what a 'correct' society should seek to do? What might make some people materially/'objectively' better off may also make them miserable. What makes people happier may make the world worse by encouraging people to 'waste' their lives on meaningless things (like say, virtual reality experiences). What makes most lives better might make a lot of other people happy (the utilitarian issue).

Science cannot say what the goal you're trying to achieve is. That's where philosophy comes in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've really enjoyed the time I've spent listening to PEL[0]. If you start from the beginning and listen in order, they mostly try to build on previous episodes.

[0] [https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/](https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/) it's worth it to become a PEL citizen for access to the archives

</comment><comment><USER35> I like reading both old and new philosophy, because I feel philosophy tends to explore ideas with less bias and polarity. The point isn't to be "right" as much as it is to think and explore. For example, one philosopher can ask "Why shouldn't we eat babies," without other philosophers engaging in political demonstrations, leaflet campaigns, and anti-baby-eating benefit concerts. The goal isn't to leave the philosophy meeting and find a baby to eat, but rather to explore the topic intellectually.

</comment><comment><USER36> Just FYI for the folks here, every time Aristotle's works were translated they caused a golden age, Rome, Classical Arabia.

No scientist would ever disavow epistemology, no matter how much they pretend once an issue _really_ comes down to it, it really matters.

For example I will link a picture out of Gregory Clark's a farewell to alms that shows that Classical Athens was ahead pound for pound than 1800's England!

Classical Philosophy is also important for learning how to rule well w/o over reliance on the industrial revolution, the entirety of science's false glory is the glory of industry and technology.

The below link shows that Athens/Ancient Assyria had a better economy than 1800's England, much better, and Roman Egypt is competitive. [https://twitter.com/SanguineEmpiric/status/81818406860496076...](https://twitter.com/SanguineEmpiric/status/818184068604960768)

Afaik, modern sociological research is proving Hegel correct see Ricardo Duchesne, the real problem is, is that the civilizational distance isn't _that_ large, or actually doesn't exist between Rome and say 1800's England, I effectively consider it continuous if you know what I mean.

</comment><comment><USER20> My problem lately hasn't been a lack of need to read philosophy. It's been a lack of time. When I do have idle moments I want to turn my brain off.

</comment><comment><USER37> After old philosophy, came several centuries of war and monotheism. This dark age gave wrong explanations to several important questions. Once Renaissance rediscovered old philosophy, then came back the strategies to formulate questions relevantly and avoid wrong answers. From there, monotheism was doomed. And eventually, rationalism was on its way to success. Nowadays, old philosophy and rationalism are considered too complex and abstract. We are coming back to simple (wrong) answers: monotheism and war (and I would add propaganda). The difference with the previous dark ages is that nowadays old philosophy is still widely available. Just that no one considers it as a way to ask good questions and never be fooled by wrong answers.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm not sure about philosophy, but for physics, the most elegant expression of new discoveries is mathematical equations and numeric measurements. The words used by the original discoverer are not that important, because they just introduce the equations and numbers and provide context. When they appear in textbooks, the equations are usually expressed in the same form as the original discoverer expressed them, so in that sense, you are reading the original (equations).

</comment><comment><USER39> I think at least two of the explanations dismissed by the author are intriguing, even if not fully adequate as answers to her question.

>Philosophy is not trying to communicate normal content that can be in explicit statements, of the kind you might be able to explain well and check the understanding of and such.

I think there's something to that. Some forms of philosophy advocate broad conceptual systems that "hang together" in a way. I don't know how you would teach Kantian philosophy without reading passages from Kant, for instance.

>Philosophy is about having certain experiences which pertain to the relevant philosophy, much like reading a poem is different to reading a summary of its content.

I think that applies to writers such as Nietzsche, and some of the more substantive writers continental philosophers. It also applies, for better or worse, to writers who in my opinion wrote nonsense, but are nevertheless written in a style intended to be "experienced." And at least in principle I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

And beyond those two bullet points, I can think of a few more.

One is we're supposed to believe that philosophy deals with timeless subject matter. So it's not necessarily surprising that at certain points in history some people might do a really good job writing about it, expressing ideas that continue to be relevant and which aren't improved upon by attempts to elucidate.

Another reason to read old philosophers is the same reason some courses teach math or physics in a way that emphasizes the historical circumstances where the ideas first originated. I've even heard of some courses that teach almost entirely in primary sources. You can view the ideas with a sense of discovery and an appreciation for the ingenuity involved. A lot of the magic in very beautiful ideas tends to die when it's clinically summarized in a textbook.

Now, all of that said, I still think there are many branches of philosophy where you don't need to read old sources. Things like language, logic, meta- ethics, and probably many others can just be summarized while ignoring historical sources, saving a lot of time. But again, contra the author's suggestion, from what I know it's at least relatively common to have graduate level courses on philosophical subjects that are focused on cutting edge literature.

</comment><comment><USER40> I read them because I find there timeless truths.

</comment><comment><USER41> These are good points. I don't consider philosophy outmodded, and I do think that in every field you should study its history too to learn it's dirty secrets and biases. But I don't think that in philiosophy this is any more or less true, as the author seems to also suspect.

</comment><comment><USER42> Really enjoyed reading this - Robert Pirsig had a similar criticism of philosophy in academia.

<comment><USER43> There's also this one from pg: [http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)

<comment><USER44> >> "In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college. I had several motives, some more honorable than others. One of the less honorable was to shock people."

Really miss PG being more active on his blog, HN, YC, etc.

PG is active on Twitter:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg](https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The same could be said about any other time period. If it was 1970 you could say we have televisions and cars, how could the ancients' advice possibly benefit us. Next the author will tell us about an article he read about the Singularity.

<comment><USER36> Lindy effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wisdom is the product of knowledge and knowledge is often times the product of foolish mistakes.

A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and changes the weather in California.

Unknowns is the one word answer to your question.

You have your known knowns, your known unknowns and your unknown unknowns.

We have to make decisions every day with known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Philosophy is a body of knowledge that is in built up on trial-and-error over time. Those first trials start for us when history first started. We've been building on them ever since. We still know next to nothing about consciousness. Philosophy today primarily deals with consciousness. Once we've modeled the conscious brain and can completely control and predict human nature then there truly will be no need for philosophy.

<comment><USER47> Don't forget about the unknown knowns! The things we know but which we don't know that we know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> So, entertainment with role models.

That is the best description of philosophy I ever heard.

</comment><comment><USER14> The paradox goes away once you realize that philosophy is more like literature than it is like science.

</comment><comment><USER49> There seem to be a couple of different questions and concerns in this post that have been confused (the first step: clarify the question). One seems to be the question of why we study old philosophers in the first place (1), another is the question why we study them in their original language (2). The most discernible answer the author proposes, to the first question at least, is that reading old philosophers is a way of learning about the methodologies employed by a philosopher. My brief response...

(2) The original text is the original data. The first task is to understand what exactly it is that a philosopher said. Nailing that down can itself be the subject of debate. As multilingual people who've used more than one language in the course of intellectual work know, translation is often an approximation of the original text. Language is bound up with culture and what words denote, their connotations, their significance, etc, aren't always translatable in a straightforward fashion. By comprehending the language, we have a better grasp of the content the philosopher was trying to communicate to us. That doesn't mean good translations can't exist, but that, too, can be the subject of debate. From there, we have all manner of commentary which begins a tradition and can spin off into still other traditions. Science operates in essentially the same way. There is a scientific tradition with important figures that have initiated fruitful traditions themselves and who are likewise inheritors of still older traditions. Some traditions fade for a number of reasons. Understanding both the commentary and the original text can clarify things better than understanding just one of the two. Your understanding becomes more perfect.

(1) The notion that philosophical theories at time T+1 are necessarily better than those at time T is an appeal to novelty, i.e., a fallacy. Theories fall out of favor not necessarily because whatever takes their place, so to speak, is more formidable. That kind of progress isn't a given nor is it that straightforward. For example, that Cartesianism and its fallout has dominated a good chunk of western thought for the last few centuries does not mean that the Aristotelianism it "replaced" was inferior.

In response to the proposal that we read Aristotle to absorb his methodology, I'd like to answer in the context of what I wrote above. The methodologies he uses are communicated through the tradition and numerous commentaries have been written on the methodologies Aristotle employes (they vary depending on the subject matter he is attending to). However, it is a mistake to think that that is the only thing Aristotle offers. Aristotle's methodology, after all, is a means to the truth. Philosophy is a theoretical endeavor where "theoretical" means it is done to know things for their own sake.

</comment><comment><USER50> The old philosophers had much greater breadth because the whole vista was open to them. They were treading on soil for the first time. Newer philosophers are dry academics who are just filling in a few details. Who wants to read that?

<comment><USER51> Too add most modern 'philosophers' publish for the sake of publishing, not because they actually have anything new or interesting to say.

Philosophy is an unbroken conversation going back thousands of years, why would we want the cliffnotes summary written by 'academics' who most times demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of what they're writing about when we can go straight to the source and read the original.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Well, Aritotle is famous for his description of fly with eight legs. He was so much in empireae, that did not bothered to count the fact, flies have 6 legs.

</comment><comment><USER53> I read old books because I would rather learn from those who built civilization than those who tore it down.

</comment><comment><USER54> The problem with modern philosophy is it rides the curtails of physics and other sciences. It basically exists to explain the phenomenon the physics cannot (think schrodinger's cat).

Ancient philosophy was all intertwined with science because the philosophers were the scientists. Ancient philosophy still has its place in teaching readers how to think better and more rationally. And I think modern philosophy will increase in value as we build more intelligent machines.

</comment><comment><USER55> The author is ignoring the 800-lb gorilla in the room which is the anti-truth, anti-rationality fashions -- modernism and post-modernism -- that have dominated and corrupted philosophy for the past century. The analogy to physical science would make sense only if the mainstream of science since about 1910 was dominated by politics and founded on a premise that whatever makes you feel happy, man, must be what makes the universe go round. In such an environment, it would be entirely reasonable to ignore the modern trash and have your kids read Newton...

<comment><USER56> Cultural marxist straw feminists ruining modern civilization, oh no!

<comment><USER57> Oh, cmon. You don't need to buy into that whole "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory to believe that postmodernism is a cancer to philosophy (and so much else). All it takes is reading some postmodernist writings, really.</comment></comment></comment>


Atom package that makes you feel like a god - <AUTHOR> https://atom.io/packages/rumble <comment><USER2> Feel like you are terribly drunk and/or have taken some really bad psychedelics.</comment>


Rimbaud Draws New Followers to the Hometown He Hated - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/16/world/europe/france-rimbaud-poetry.html <comment> 52-6F-62 Lol. "The Jim Morrison of poets". Pretty sure Morrison wanted to be the "Rimbaud of rock stars".

Anyway been a fan since highschool and wanted to share, though its sort of tangential, but there's a pretty decent movie about Rimbaud's progression ft. Leonardo DiCaprio from the mid 90's called _Total Eclipse_. It's worth a watch if you're a fan.</comment>


Mastery Learning of Programming the Hard Way - <AUTHOR> https://exercism.io/ <comment><USER2> I highly recommend exercism as a way to either learn a preferred language deeper or to begin learning a new language. I went from an apprentice Pythonista to journeyman level and picked up C++, go, and Rust sufficiently to read other's code by using exercism.

Note: just a satisfied user, no other affiliation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here, just very enthusiastic about it, no affiliation.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has \- a track of exercises to follow or roam freely between them, \- a tracker of how far you are from mastering a language, \- mentors who check your uploaded code, \- local coding on your own machine, submitting via CLI tool (one command)</comment>


Microsoft needs Wizards: A 1984 Microsoft job posting - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/net.jobs/msg/4f2cf440919eeda9 <comment><USER2> Mike Maples talks more about Microsoft back then: (<http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107465/1/oh387mm.pdf> ):

"""I can remember going to the first Microsoft Company picnic in 1988. There were only two children. Microsoft had 1,800 employees and there were only a couple of them that were married. You had all these young kids who weren't married and were right out of school. IBM had conventional dress codes; Microsoft - it was very much like a college campus. The only difference in how they lived, the hours they kept and the way they dressed, between a college campus and Microsoft was that Microsoft bought the equipment. They all wore their shorts and half of them wore sandals or no shoes. Microsoft bought a lot of T-shirts and things for them. There weren't set hours - the management system was to let people pick or sign up for what they were going to do, and it was up to them to do it. So there was very little management attention over directing people or telling them what to do - it was a very empowered work force. And my suspicion was that that was the way IBM was in the 1930s and 1940s. They were much more formal, because the time was much more formal in terms of dress. But in terms of the ages and the attitudes and the mission the people were on - I think it would be a lot the same."""

<comment><USER3> I think it's an inevitable transition that Google is going through right now. Probably Facebook, too.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps it is as simple as a direct consequence of the average age at the company?

<comment><USER5> Yea, old people are boring and suck. Wait I just turned 30. Crap!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am by no means an old-school software guy, but I have distinct memories of when my dad worked in emerging software companies. And more importantly, back when Microsoft was 'cool'. It was like having free soda in the break rooms and awesome company picnics was -the- status symbol of a fun career.

Now, people much more junior expect all of that, plus crazy workplaces, free meals, free babysitting, free carwash, free haircuts, etc. I wonder what the current entry level software engineer ad at Microsoft looks like. Which is weird, at my school UW, they weren't even there at the CS career fair. Meanwhile FB was there with free t-shirts, Google had a giant android costumed guy waddling around, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. They all made it seem like you weren't even applying for jobs, and you weren't even expected to actually have to work.

Microsoft definitely helped define the techie dream workplace, even after they got 'huge'. Why did that have to change?

<comment><USER7> "Now, people much more junior expect all of that, plus crazy workplaces, free meals, free babysitting, free carwash, free haircuts, etc."

Junior or not, only a tiny percentage of people can get these perks. For example google recieves 1 million CVs a year approximately 5000 of which get a job offer (0.5%). (approximately 35% of those who are allowed to have a phone interview are allowed to the onsite interviews and approximately 25% of the 'onsite-interviewed' people get a job offer.)

<comment><USER8> That is totally true, but a very large percentage of those 1 million are people who simply have no chance of getting the job. Google is seen as a hot company and place to work for so it attracts a lot of resumes, much more than microsoft ever was...

And they make it pretty darned easy to apply. There are some other interesting numbers in this infographic - salaries and such: <http://img.gtricks.com/2011/10/job-in-google.png>

<comment><USER9> I realize my comment is redundant because you already said "infographic", but that image is garbage. The salary numbers are incredibly misleading, since they ignore stock or are an arbitrary sample.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like a fun place to be, and just reinforces that this industry seems to endlessly spin around in circles.

I mean, when you read this and compare it to what you hear of MSFT today (via Mini, for example), it's not far off to compare it with Google who seems to be shifting from this to something more disciplined with Larry as the CEO. Extrapolating to what might happen to Facebook isn't far off either.

<comment><USER11> I know, I was thinking exactly the same thing as I read this.

I wonder which large companies have held out against this type of decay through the decades and how they managed it.

<comment><USER12> Whether that indeed a decay is questionable.

Sony had its own approach to this(citing Yoshide Nakamura): _Our company management felt that to prepare the company for the digital network era of the 21 century, it was important to have the most appropriate organizational structure in place. That was the core reason why we created our new structure. Sony is a large company now. Our worldwide consolidated sales are over $56 billion, with 170,000 employees, but in spirit we always try to be small venture company. We want to maintain this, So when Mr.Nabuyuki Idei became president in April 1995, he gave us two slogans: "Regeneration" and "Digital Dream Kids." Thats the spirit of being small and going back to when we started Sony in 1946. So we want to make Sony smaller. Instead of having this huge corporation, he wants to organize Sony into four divisional companies so that a small venture capital spirit can be brought into management_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Back in the 1980s, research showed individual offices for developers resulted in significantly higher productivity. [Peopleware has a good chapter on this, if I recall correctly.] This was a core part of MS culture until the mid-2000s, when overcrowding led to office sharing.

I intereviewed at MS as I was graduating college in 1983. My interview loop included Charles Simonyi and Steve Ballmer, who had just gotten a prerelease of the Tandy Model 100 mentioned in the OP and demoed it to me in the interview. It was definitely a programmer-centric world, in the best way; but people I talked to also had a very strong business focus as well. I turned down the job offer to go to grad school ... by the time I wound up there in 1999 after selling them my startup, it was a very different place.

</comment><comment><USER14> If I see a job posting with the exact same wording Today, I will apply for the job. So much better than the standard "looking for a (ruby|python|c|javascript) (rockstar|ninja)" than it makes me cry!

<comment><USER15> I hate the term rockstar, and i dont think ninja's are good communicators...always sneaking about.

Seriously though, think of what a rockstar is like. High maintenance, on drugs, performs for a short period of time then expects a high payout, goes out late and misses gigs...i dont want a rockstar.

I want a WIZARD! I'm pretty sure wizards are reliable and old school...

<comment><USER16> Wizards are certainly never late.

In seriousness; all job postings should be written by a member of the department hiring for the position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What struck me most is that the following was clearly a pride point of the culture at MSFT:

"The company is owned (a key issue) and operated by software wizards: Bill Gates and Paul Allen."

Not anymore. Company is now run by a professional bean counter brought into that position by the former software whiz.

</comment><comment><USER18> "we never do anything stupid because some manager/MBA/suit-type has power without knowledge". Sounds like Steve Ballmer, right ?

<comment><USER19> This was back in 1984. I wonder what led Bill Gates to choose Ballmer as the new CEO.

<comment><USER20> Ballmer was back in the company then. People outside MSFT underestimate the technical know how of SteveB - he ran release management for the first version of Windows. He _understands_ software. He might be doing a terrible job the last decade but that is not due to him being some 'MBA' stereotype.

Also - BillG really trusts Steve. They've worked together for over 25 years.

<comment><USER21> This is a really good point. Ballmer may not be the greatest CEO ever, but he does understand Microsoft products and what engineering goes on behind them. His interview in which he made fun of IBM wanting metrics like KLOC and judging quality by that shows that he had some clue even back then (~12-13 years ago).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Your work won't be canceled due to some political/financial upheaval"

Don't think that is true anymore.

Wasn't there a post by a former project manager of Silverlight a while ago? While that may not be representative of Microsoft to that degree, I've worked with enough former Softies to know politics play a big role. Especially in the war between Office and Windows.

<comment><USER12> Can you elaborate about the war? I thought Office and Windows are kind of Siamese twins, unable to survive without each other.

</comment></comment><comment> johnx123-up

       James Gordon Letwin (born July 2, 1952)is an American
       software developer and one of the original twelve Microsoft
       employees.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin>

</comment><comment><USER23> They had me at "private offices (as many with windows as topology permits)" (assuming topology permits at least 1)

<comment><USER24> Microsoft is infinite: it has no walls, and therefore, no windows.

The Microsoft that can be known is not the eternal Microsoft. The wizards that can whiz are not the eternal wizards.

<comment><USER25> On the contrary: Microsoft is almost all windows, but they all look inward.

<comment><USER26> Also, they put a lot of people in cubicals now. The short kind, where it's impossible to get privacy, or quiet.

<comment><USER27> Not the software development teams in Redmond, at least as of 2007, though some of the support and administrative services certainly were. The goal was to give all dev team members their own private office. Interns and the more junior people (in terms of number of years at MSFT) are "doubled up" if there are insufficient spaces, but it is generally considered a bad thing and something management tries to minimize.

<comment><USER28> I work in Xbox, regular employee developers still have private offices, contractors (which I am) don't.

<comment><USER28> It's lame to complain about being downvoted, but I'm genuinely curious why this was downvoted - it seems like it's nothing that I'd expect to be divisive, it's just blandly factual.

<comment><USER26> ... because it's not true :)

<comment><USER28> Huh, it's true of all the people / places I've met / paid attention to, but I haven't scoured the whole department so you're probably right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I thought I was reasonably savvy of old-school tech, but what is this type of address? decvax!Microsoft!joannr

<comment><USER29> I think it's a bang path: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Bang_path>

<comment><USER30> Yup. It's basically a route described as a list of hosts. One of the hosts is actually on the internet proper, and then the message would be transferred to each successive host along the way using whatever local links were available (including dialup modems) using a store and forward protocol.

As dedicated internet access became more common UUCP became obsolete.

<comment><USER31> We use it at work to collect point-of-sale data from our stores.

Don't ask me how it got there, I wasn't around when that happened, but yes, UUCP.

<comment><USER32> I implemented a UUCP network in 2001. It was still around because of some legacy (SCO UNIX) systems which just couldn't be gotten rid of.

Fortunately, these things are much less common now that software costs are essentially zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yeah the good old days when everyone still wanted to work there (me included).

Lets see how many of the "good" companies of today will turn in future dark side companies as Microsoft is usually associated nowadays.

<comment><USER9> Eh, Google went evil, Facebook was chartered evil, Msft overflowed and is back to good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> <http://peteandcarol.com/msft.htm>

</comment><comment><USER35> Is rockstars the new wizards?

<comment><USER36> Speculation: you could _easily_ get to the #1 spot on HN with a blog entitled "From Wizards to Rockstars: what's wrong with the motivation of the current generation of technologists".

<comment><USER30> Rockstars are not such a bad model to emulate for hackers. Most rockstars are talented, passionate about their craft, spend at least a decade just honing their abilities through constant practice, spend years grinding on their projects in relative obscurity and poverty until they finally find something that resonates with the public and/or gain enough exposure to attain popularity and success after which they work even harder to capitalize on it making art and experiences that stand the test of time and attain a commensurate level of recognition, appreciation, and financial reward.

The cartoon image of rockstars as the idle rich with some inborn exceptional talent or some luck of fate that allows them to attain a life of fame and fortune with very little effort is, of course, a much less noble behavioral model to want to emulate.

<comment><USER37> "Rockstar" in the software context is the politically correct way to say "prima donna" (with all the positive and negative connotations thereof).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna>

<comment><USER30> In the software context it has both meanings, which is the source of conflict over the term. An employer advertising they want "rockstar" programmers does not intend to hire prima donna's, even though that's what they may end up getting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I email my resumee to decvax!Microsoft!joannr. No response so far.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if email@example.com would work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Being too young to remember a world without the Internet, I'm surprised to see that the terms "venture capital" and "startup" were in vogue in 1984.

<comment><USER40> Internet for the masses, perhaps, but that job posting is from a Usenet post nonetheless :-)

I miss the Usenet of yesteryear, nothing now comes close, but even I was surprised to look it up just now and see it started in 1980!

<comment><USER41> You might find <http://olduse.net> interesting, then.

<comment><USER40> Oh no.. you might have just found me a new (old?) hobby! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it, given all the startups that exist today i'm very glad people are reading this job posting.

Your cool company today can change significantly, and maybe thats ok...but it is a little sad, i think you'd struggle to get a similar recommendation for MS these days.

</comment><comment><USER42> Back in that day they offered private offices, now you can barely have a place to call your own.

<comment><USER43> They still put their SDEs, SDETs, and PMs in private offices. There are some cubicles on the Redmond campus, but they are the exception, and I've never talked to anyone who who had a cube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wonder if it's this person: [http://www.classmates.com/directory/public/memberprofile/lis...](http://www.classmates.com/directory/public/memberprofile/list.htm?regId=34648741)

<comment><USER45> The message is posted by Gordon Letwin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> How many of you heard Dire Straits in their head when you read that they had Microwave ovens? I would even go so far as to assume that some rooms had colour TVs.

<comment><USER47> with guitars playing on the mtv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I think this Microsoft company is going to really take off.</comment>


Intel 4004 microprocessor oral history panel (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102658187 <comment><USER2> Like most history, things get simplified and written from the perspective of the victorious over time. If Intel wasn't a vast corporation today we would be reading about some other late-60's LSI project as the genesis of the modern era, I'm sure.

For example these guys : [http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/microprocessor_history.htm](http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/microprocessor_history.htm) Interesting to read in the CHM article that Hal Feeney had worked at GI in LA. He also talks about military uses of MOS in the 60's.

Or this guy : [http://firstmicroprocessor.com/documents/ap1-26-97.pdf](http://firstmicroprocessor.com/documents/ap1-26-97.pdf)

<comment><USER3> These are not general purpose CPUs as far as I can detect, they were never sold individually for other applications.

Such dedicated devices were exactly what made the 4004 so special, it was used for calculators but could _also_ be used in other ways because it was a true general purpose CPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recommend the youtube channel for the Computer History Museum.. they post at least one interview/Oral history every week or so.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHDr4RtxwA1KqKGwxgdK4Vg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHDr4RtxwA1KqKGwxgdK4Vg)

<comment><USER5> subscribed, thanks for the tip! love this kind of stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first time I heard of the Computer history museum was when I was looking for a new credit union, and one of the ways to get a membership was to sign up for the CHM. Even though I don't use that credit union anymore, I keep renewing my yearly Computer History membership because they really are preserving parts of history that might otherwise just be lost.

</comment><comment><USER7> On the 8008: [https://web.archive.org/web/20080814215757/http://www.comput...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080814215757/http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9111341)

</comment><comment><USER8> Incredible article. The slow realization of what they've created as they start implementing internal projects with this "limited use" microprocessor, it reminds me very much of articles about the creation of LISP.</comment>


Reasons to Choose Community College Over University - <AUTHOR> http://quazen.com/kids-and-teens/college-life/10-reasons-to-choose-community-college-over-university/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is something I wish I had considered before going to an engineering school. Not only could I have gotten practically the same education at the local community college for much less, I may have avoided the 100+ student lecture classes my freshman and sophomore years. This was probably the most difficult adjustment for me when starting college (along with the lopsided gender ratio in engineering).

Unfortunately, as a senior at an expensive college-prep school, choosing community college would have been a huge blow to my ego. It also would have ashamed my parents, who are immigrants and place much emphasis on having the best (read: most prestigious) education possible for their children.

<comment><USER2> Community colleges and Universities typically have opposite cost/benefit curves. At most Universities the first maybe 2 years or so are spent being taught by graduate teaching fellows in giant lecture halls, you're definitely not getting your money's worth at that point. In later years you'll probably end up in smaller classes being taught by competent professors at which point you're probably getting well more than your money's worth. In community colleges you'll get an equivalent or better experience in the first few years (classes taught by actual professors) at much, much lower cost but the quality in higher level classes are lacking. If you want the best of both worlds you can pursue an associates degree at a community college and transfer to a University of your choice after to pursue a Bachelor's degree.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! So if this is such an obvious path to take, why don't more students consider it? Why do community colleges have a bad reputation (or at the very least, considered much less prestigious)?

<comment><USER3> Their reputation stems from their purpose. Community college is there at the benefit of the community. They have extremely low or nonexistant entry requirements. This is the bad part. Since they aren't very selective about who can get in you could be the bright bulb in a room of dim ones.

Universities are highly selective. They are looking for highly motivated people. A C-student in a good school carries more weight than a C-student at a CC. A university is out to benefit itself first and foremost. If they can convince you to come and make some money in the process, it's a benefit for them. Whatever you get out of it is a benefit for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I went to a community college before going to UCB. I treasure my time at both, but for the first two years I am totally glad I was at a CC. There is no comparison to the attention you can get, if you want it, at a CC. I made more friends at CC, too. I found UCB a cold and competitive place compared to CC.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not thoroughly addressed was connections. You could make arguments about the relatively equal quality of education (usually not the case), but the social capital and connections you get from attending elite universities has great value in our world. The morality of that can be debated, but it is true nonetheless.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the top universities are good places to find similarly motivated people who are likely to do great things in the future. But college is only four years of your life -- couldn't you build a valuable network by moving to a different location? The Bay Area, for example, attracts top talent in the tech industry, regardless of where they went to school.

<comment><USER5> I think thats true, but its true of any point in life, including before college. That said, many of the successful people I know still work with their college friends regularly, and still use those connections in a major way. I don't think this is just because they're good networkers, but rather because good colleges are conducive to networking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't agree with many of the assertions made in this post.

> and you will receive just as good of an education

It depends on what you're being educated on. For the cookie-cutter classes every first- and second-year undergrad has to take, yes, I agree. For courses dealing in something you're deeply interested in or which involve advanced theory, it's more of a mixed bag.

> No crowded dorms, no roommate issues, know more people

For me, learning to deal with situations where I'm just a face in a crowd, having to deal with roommates I didn't always get along with, and having to make new friends because I didn't know _anybody_ were all valuable parts of my education.

> You don't need to take the ACT or SAT

Depends on the school.

> Employers don't care what college you got your degree from

Depends on the employer. In an ideal world, each candidate would be judged entirely on merit and accomplishments rather than on things like schooling. However, even then going to a university will provide more opportunities to get involved with cool projects or to experiment with emergent technologies.

</comment><comment><USER7> > you will receive just as good of an education

Not if one wants to get involved in academia or research. Frankly, I have gotten far more from working/talking with various professors and grad students then from actual class (in CS). Networking, I think, is another reason one might attend a better university. Otherwise, I would argue that most skills can be self-taught (or self-refined), and I agree that the author has some valid points.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, most of my best learning came from self-directed study under the guidance of a professor. Overall, I'd say my experiences outside of the classroom were the best part of being at a University though, and it's really what the individual makes of it.

I'd say a good public university is the best compromise, as you can get all the experiences of an expensive private school while saving a ton of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "you will receive just as good of an education."

Pretty bold statement. In my personal experience, having good professors, and smart hard working students in a class with me makes all the difference in terms of how much I learn. While its true, just because a professor or student is at a university doesn't mean he/she is good (just like community college doesn't automatically equal bad) a university (particularly a good university), because of its admissions policies and hiring practices is going to weed out a lot of the bad. A community college will weed out hardly anyone. Not saying a community college isn't the right choice for a lot of people, just saying that there's a lot more of a difference than this top 10 list admits.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm wondering if professors at community colleges are in fact better at teaching, since they aren't under the pressure to "publish or perish". And at the freshman-sophomore level, isn't that more valuable?

<comment><USER10> Many community college classes are taught by grad students or post-docs who haven't landed a tenure-track position yet. A friend of mine taught English and composition classes at CC for a few years; judging from her experience, there was plenty of pressure. (It doesn't help that the pay is terrible at colleges) OTOH, they do attract some people who are interested in teaching for its own sake.

I think it's hard to generalize about teaching quality in CC. The professors who teach at colleges are largely the same people as universities, either on their way up or down from the tenure track. It would be as easy to disengage as become enthusiastic about teaching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting article that brings up some valid points but did this author attend a community college? Whenever I see a generic "Top 10" post on a blog I get really suspicious.

This is going to sound condescending, but remember those kids who had no inclination to try in school and go to a good 4 year college? That's going to be at least 75% of the students there. My brother took some summer classes there and he said they were a joke.

I've heard that teaching at one sucks, and the one or two students that are truly motivated really make the job worthwhile.

I would expect to find this especially true for a math-oriented subject like programming or engineering.

<comment><USER12> Programming has always seemed like a language-oriented, not math-oriented subject to me. I think my three years of Spanish have helped my programming more than any of the calc or linear algebra I've done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Definitely an option, and for some it may be the only practical way to afford college. Certainly you'll come out of college with less debt.

</comment><comment><USER14> Many of the arguments seem to assume a large university. While there are large universities, there are also some fairly small ones. While Berkeley has 25k undergrads. Stanford has 6k, and there's always Reed and so on.

At the smaller universities, many of the early classes are quite small. And, yes it's possible for 1st years to get quality time with "name" professors.

</comment><comment><USER15> #9 Employers don't care what college you got your degree from, only that you have a degree. Why go into debt paying for university when it won't help you in the long run?

I could not disagree more.

<comment><AUTHOR> How come? Maybe for entry level positions, a recent grad from MIT with no experience would get more offers than a similarly inexperienced grad from a second tier school or a community college. But what if the second grad worked co-ops or had more projects under his or her belt? Wouldn't that be more valuable to a company?

<comment><USER3> You are comparing colleges to experience. To an employer experience always win. When I was looking for work my college courses were listed right under my name. Now, it sits right above my hobbies. I'm sure in a few years it will be just a footnote. If you can get a coop, great. Nothing stopping someone in university from doing the same. But, as an employer looking for interns, where are you going to look first. You'll probably start at a selective university because they've already done most of the filtering for you.</comment></comment></comment>


What I Learned In My First Year Of iOS Consulting - <AUTHOR> http://brandontreb.com/learned-first-year-ios-consulting

<comment><USER2> One of my common hangups with these kind of posts is the lack of history as to what lead people to these consulting gigs. Where were you before, and how long were you there? How long have you been in the game and what do you offer that is unique / special? I feel like I've wanted to jump into the consulting game for the past few years but haven't because I don't feel like I'm an expert in a particular field that would warrant consulting/contracting expertise, and I feel like you need to have a certain skill set / years of experience under your belt if you want to maximize your chances of being successful as a freelancer.

Happy for the OP, but it's just as important to provide how you got there (not to mention I'm really interested to know what led you to this level of expertise to be so in demand) so a greenhorn dev doesn't quit his job thinking anybody can do this.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point. I couldn't agree more. I should have given some more intro, however if you follow the link at the top of the post, it provides much more context.

[http://brandontreb.com/what-i-learned-in-my-first-month- bein...](http://brandontreb.com/what-i-learned-in-my-first-month-being-a- contract-ios-developer)

On my iphone right now, but if I get a chance I'm happy to post more backstory here in the comments later today.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very inspiring post. Almost thou persuadest me to go indie :).

I am glad you covered all the angles, including family, which is very important to me too. Good luck with 2014!

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you required to give project time estimates to clients before you start? What's the best way to set expectations? Things always seem to take longer than planned. One could add a bit of padding for tasks but sometimes you don't need it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on the project. I seldom do fixed bid projects as I'm a big fan of agile. I'll give a rough estimate but bill on time and materials.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Weird this article fell like a stone from #2 to 20 in seconds. Crazy

<comment><USER5> Don't see any reason it should be flagged, it seems informative and worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing. I've just embarked on this path recently so these are some timely tips.

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats and good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How many days a week do you work? How many hours a day?

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends. Early on i was putting in 50s. During the summer it was closer to 20 ;) now I'm between 30-40. Family time is super important to me so I make sure to be off by 5 (I'll still take calls and address issues at any hour when/if needed)</comment></comment>


Start unique and drop the "the" – some thoughts on URLs - <AUTHOR> http://liamnewmarch.co.uk/unique-urls/

<comment><USER2> This is a result of the inferior auto-complete implementation in Chrome. Firefox does not have this issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd note that it seems to be Chrome-specific problem. Firefox, for example, searches for any substring matches, not only prefixes (although they seem to reasonably prefer results that are matching on word boundaries).

</comment><comment><USER4> They should've picked guardian.io and used 4em Droid Sans everywhere with lots of coffee mug stock photos.

<comment><USER5> gu.ardi.an

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Handy tip: the Guardian own gu.com - so you can type gu.com to go straight to theguardian.com (they also use it for their URL shortener)

<comment><AUTHOR> That sir is a very handy tip, especially on mobile where typing's a premium.

<comment><USER7> It is? I've only recently started using a mobile device, but with android's drag-to-form-words mechanism, I can you type "guardian" faster than "gu". I don't know about iOS, though.

<comment><USER8> I tap faster than I swipe, although I use SwiftKey, so it makes tapping much much easier.

I do swipe on occasion, though. Depends if I am using two or one thumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure the domain without the "the" was taken, so this isn't particularly useful advice for someone moving to the crowded .com TLD.

<comment><USER10> Indeed - [https://www.guardian.com/](https://www.guardian.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's fair, but is it really so much work to enter three extra keys on a url? That doesn't strike me as a convincing enough reason not to attempt a brand change, if it otherwise makes sense. (Unless there are many frustrated mobile users somewhere who've decided they've put up with long urls far enough!)

Using an article such as "the" in a brand typically indicates a desire to lay stake on a common noun as a proper noun, or at least the definitive instance of the noun. It often doesn't make sense when your brand is obviously a proper noun or otherwise unique already, but I suppose there's plenty enough newspapers having a variant of "Guardian" in their titles to warrant a push to definitive-hood.

Edit: A friend also pointed out that "guardian.com" is already taken by another established organization. I think that trumps my silly grammatical analysis :P

<comment><USER12> Well shouldn't it have been the-manchester-guardian.com :-)

Will be interesting to have a look and see how well or not the in house seo/dev team have done the migration

<comment><USER13> URLS were and I assume still are a massive part of the collective thought process in the Guardian but yeah, if you are GU then the internet will take whatever you say as canonical to be canonical regardless of seo strategy

<comment><USER12> didn't work when a major uk job site (no names no pack drill) stuffed up its canonicals on all its job category pages cost them 1/2 a mill in less than a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there really people who will decide "I want to read the Guardian now," and then when they find they have to type four or five letters into their browser bar instead of just one, will decide not to bother? It's now too much effort to type four or five keys? (It's possible, I suppose; I am way out of touch and I still don't understand much of what the kids do now - that thing where "Dave is the mayor of some street corner" was a total mystery to me)

</comment><comment><USER15> Having 'the' at the start is not ideal, but Guardian Glass (who own guardian.com) no doubt wanted a lot of money for it.

In any case, all the cool kids use gu.com

</comment><comment><USER16> From a branding perspective, if you're forced to use an underscore for a twitter or instagram name, always put it at the end.

Sad to see the Guardian go to a .com

<comment><USER4> This is superficial and hard to quantify, but .com has a junky feel to it nowadays. Their co.uk sounds more reputable.

<comment><USER17> To you, perhaps. To many tech people, perhaps.

But the Guardian is trying to reach more than that audience, and I'm sure there are lots of "Fox-News Americans" who will scorn the .uk and still find .com to be professional. They have a sense that .com is normal, and that other TLDs are inferior.

<comment><USER16> I think this is extremely accurate. I'm launching a new brand next month with a .co and I've found that people that are into tech things like it while the older generations give me a blank stare.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how well-received the coming .tech/software/app/etc. gTLDs will be. Will people still want to grab the .com for their company?

<comment><USER16> I think the dot com will be the traditional bet, but over time become one of those 'nice-to-haves' \- - with the ridiculous amount of squatting on the most bizarre terms, other tlds are becoming far more attractive.

Above this, the dot co people are making great strides in offering a wide range of benefits to signing on. Not only discounts and freebies, but the potential of a community. In the future, I think more tlds will adopt this model to attract business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was part of my thinking in [http://getstarter.com](http://getstarter.com) single key navigation to your favorite web sites, but for some reason it seems not to catch on that well.

</comment><comment><USER19> "I don't think I visit another site beginning with x"

Yeah yeah..!</comment>


SF.net has been down for 8hrs, did you even notice? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sfnet_ops/status/621702261685686272

<comment><USER2> I thought most people had migrated off of that beached whale?

Sure it was great back in the day; even I had an account. Git became popular; Github came out using SF to host your OSS tools became a bad joke.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. Trying to use brew on OSX, a lot of broken links now...

</comment><comment><USER4> another nail in the ol' coffin</comment>


Samsung wants to patent a curved screen for smartwatches - <AUTHOR> https://www.patentsandtech.com/samsung-wants-to-patent-a-curved-screen-for-smartwatches/ <comment><USER2> Samsung wants to patent something that existed years ago, developed by other companies. Here is one from more than 3 and a half years ago:

[https://interestingengineering.com/flexenable- creates-a-4-7-...](https://interestingengineering.com/flexenable- creates-a-4-7-inch-flexible-screen-that-wraps-around-your-wrist)

And a video discussing a prototype and how they planned to update it:

[https://youtu.be/A1azlGZiBvc](https://youtu.be/A1azlGZiBvc)

And here's another company from earlier this year doing the same thing, and happens to implement that planned upgrade:

[https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/review/smart-watches/nubia- alp...](https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/review/smart-watches/nubia- alpha-3692873/)

It's even got touch screen and a camera. Check out the video:

[https://youtu.be/JbY8DM8c-h0](https://youtu.be/JbY8DM8c-h0)

And if that isn't convincing enough, how about this one from 10 years ago (scroll down the page a bit for pics of it):

[https://www.wired.com/2009/01/flexible- wrist/](https://www.wired.com/2009/01/flexible-wrist/)

It looks a whole lot like this one from Apple last year:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6FINL5iqfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6FINL5iqfg)

Samsung should probably be running into prior art issues on this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recall seeing a number of previous devices over the years with a curved screen that would strap to the wrist. mostly FRS radio/GPS combos, or personal audio recorder devices, not of US manufacture thats the part im sure of.

i wonder how a flexible screen would fare against any patent. could a flat flexible be legal until its worn and, the resulting curvature becomes infringing?</comment>