> beyond me. Academia is a strange, in my opinion, deeply unattractive
place, that works very differently, because the incentives are
different.
Well, maybe “unattractive” is too strong a statement, but incentives are
different for sure. The main difference is IMHO that these guys love to play
with some smart new things regardless of their practical fitness to a useful
purpose.
They just invent something - without considering the possible practical use of
their invention, good and bad sides of it from the practical point of view -
and play with it.
Engineering uses another approach. Engineer always has a task of implementing
some device or software. The device/software must fit the particular purpose,
and has the particular requirements. Engineer solves the practical task, his
work must be really usable for some purpose. That’s why engineers use the KISS
principle, while scientists do not.
If the “academia guy” goes in for engineering - then often this is nearly a
disaster. He will create something overdesigned, bloated, full of unnecessary
smartness which usually makes handling of the device/software overly complex,
and so on.
–
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com