lazy thoughts

[Georg Wrede]

On Mon, 2009-01-12 at 21:32 -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:


> > I'll hazard a guess that it's because some ideas that have originated 
> > from the community don't always get recognition by the D team.  Later, 
> > when the D team independently engineers similar ideas, it is likely to 
> > be exasperating to the community members that promoted them in the first 
> > place (and worked hard to implement them too).

...

> Many people, when they acquire an idea, understand and internalize it to 
> the point where they essentially reinvent it. Sometimes I noticed this 
> happens to Walter - he hears something without understanding it, thinks 
> it through, and comes back with it after having truly rediscovered it. 
> I've had to ask him explicitly to grant me credit in a few instances, 
> one of I remember right now being the scope statements. There are a few 
> others that I even know it's useless to ask credit for... such as 
> typelists which got mis-baptized as tuples, foam at my mouth 
> notwithstanding :o). Therefore, I'm sure many people who must also be 
> feeling Walter (or Bartosz or myself) should have credited properly, but 
> weren't friends enough with him/them/us to casually ask for it. This can 
> only be frustrating, so by all means do tell about it.
> 
> What I'm trying to say is that every person has this and that little 
> quirk, and that Walter is one of the most honest and ethical persons I 
> have ever met. So if there's any odd snubbing effect or whatnot, that is 
> not intentional and could be easily corrected.

That seems to be somehow universal. I've helped two separate persons, at
different times, who were trying to decide to which part of town to
move. On both occasions I spent considerable time explaining and
advertising where they should move. After several months they both moved
to where I suggested, and then, a few years later both literally
believed they had come up with the idea themselves. One of them actually
got upset when I reminded her that it was actually thanks to me that she
now lived where she did.

Another example was a technician at a company that imported Commodore-64
computers. The company had to set up some kind of repair shop for the
warranty repairs, and they had no equipment for digital diagnostics, at
all. Usually the symptom was "it doesn't start". The guy was heavily
into electronics, he had even built a high-end stereo amplifier. But he
had no experience with digital electronics.

I showed him that you can take an AM radio, tune it between stations,
and then listen to the radio. I taught him how he can hear the
difference between a CPU problem, bad ROM, bad RAM, or a bad display
chip. It took a while, but then he got it.

Then, 20 years later, when we met by chance, he bragged to me about how
he had invented a way to know what's wrong with those computers with
only a radio. And he got upset when I reminded him of my version of the
story. (I originally got the idea when I had bought my first HP-25
programmable calculator. I happened to be listening to Radio Luxembourg,
which was the only radio station in the '70s that played good music in
Europe. I could "hear" what the calculator was doing! Later, with my
VIC-20, I used to listen to the computer "think", just for fun.)


All these people, genuinely and honestly believed they had come up with
the stuff themselves. 

It's happened to me, too, here on this very newsgroup. I have many
examples. Lest folks get angry, I will not list the things here, but
that's all on the record, if one wants to wade through the previous
years of posts. It happens all the time, both here and around us.

Of course we all should strive to give credit where credit is due, but I
don't really believe people should start to cry every time "their idea"
gets reinvented. That's just life. And we should be here to further D,
not to gather personal merit or fame.