If you - like me - buy into the idea that the real "inventor" of something is the person who explained it so well that it never needed to be invented again, then you can make a pretty compelling argument that there are entire fields of computation, tools and algorithms that are widely used right now, that still haven't been invented yet.
And I mean, there's some epistemological hurfdurfing to be had in that argument, sure, but I think it suggests something deeper and maybe both more sinister and more optimistic, that we're missing a more fundamental shared language underpinning these tools that we need for these "inventions" to be fully manifest. Pseudocode isn't it, academic publications trapped in their own discourse-incentive isolate, aren't it.
@mhoye It also potentially means there's still time to prevent some of them being invented.
(again, in sinister or optimistic aspect)
@mhoye "become uninventable"
@jplebreton @mhoye I initially read this as "become unenviable" and thought, yeah, we're on track for that…
@mhoye I think that also highlights the real costs you see from "Not Invented Here" syndrome. How much time and effort to in essence run in place, versus taking something that works for 80 or 90 percent of what you need and then adding the additional bits in so that others could benefit from them?
@mhoye I might miss something here, but...
I think the premise is wrong. The inventor is not the one who explains something really good; it's the one who first invented it.
It's a bit like that "if a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one listening, does it make a sound?" Yes, it does. Listening is not required for sound to exist. Other people understanding an invention is not required for an inventor to have something invented.
(But it's probably a some figure of speech, I guess?)
@mhoye
That gave me a rueful chuckle!
@mhoye
debatably relevant:
https://sauropods.win/@llewelly/114009076363834130
@mhoye The Future is Here, It's Just Unevenly Adopted
@mhoye With such an extreme viewpoint, what IS actually invented now (in computation or otherwise)?
@mhoye Oooh I love this :)