
Richard Hamming: You and Your Research - hboon
http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html
======
ColinWright
An old friend which has occasionally sparked some interesting comments, and
some interesting contrary views.

In case you're interested in seeing some of those earlier discussions, you can
use the search function:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22You+and+...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22You+and+your+research%22)

Here are some of the results:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13218> (6 comments)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52337> (11 comments)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229067> (7 comments)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=524856> (1 comment)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=542023> (4 comments)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=852405> (1 comment)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=915515> (5 comments)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524524> (no comments)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2012570> (no comments)

Some of the comments were simply pointing out that it had been posted before -
the first being 1650 days ago.

There are also many, many references within comments, _etc._

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aaronsw
I just discovered recently that Richard Hamming also has a book on this topic:

[http://www.amazon.com/D/dp/B000P2XFPA%3FSubscriptionId%3D14G...](http://www.amazon.com/D/dp/B000P2XFPA%3FSubscriptionId%3D14G329YWN5EHXRB8WRG2%26tag%3Dbooksinfo-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D9056995014)

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stiff
There is a video of the talk as well:

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8qsc4_richard-hamming-
talk...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8qsc4_richard-hamming-talk-
part-1_tech) [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8qsg7_richard-hamming-
talk...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8qsg7_richard-hamming-talk-
part-2_tech) [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8qsk0_richard-hamming-
talk...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8qsk0_richard-hamming-talk-
part-3_tech)

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lionhearted
Some of the best writing on luck and action ever -

\--

In order to get at you individually, I must talk in the first person. I have
to get you to drop modesty and say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like to do
first-class work.'' Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good
work. You're not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on you and you do
great things by chance. Well, that's a kind of dumb thing to say. I say, why
shouldn't you set out to do something significant. You don't have to tell
other people, but shouldn't you say to yourself, ``Yes, I would like to do
something significant.''

...

Let me start not logically, but psychologically. I find that the major
objection is that people think great science is done by luck. It's all a
matter of luck. Well, consider Einstein. Note how many different things he did
that were good. Was it all luck? Wasn't it a little too repetitive? Consider
Shannon. He didn't do just information theory. Several years before, he did
some other good things and some which are still locked up in the security of
cryptography. He did many good things.

You see again and again, that it is more than one thing from a good person.
Once in a while a person does only one thing in his whole life, and we'll talk
about that later, but a lot of times there is repetition. I claim that luck
will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, ``Luck favors the
prepared mind.'' And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is
indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or
later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The
particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not.

For example, when I came to Bell Labs, I shared an office for a while with
Shannon. At the same time he was doing information theory, I was doing coding
theory. It is suspicious that the two of us did it at the same place and at
the same time - it was in the atmosphere. And you can say, ``Yes, it was
luck.'' On the other hand you can say, ``But why of all the people in Bell
Labs then were those the two who did it?'' Yes, it is partly luck, and partly
it is the prepared mind; but `partly' is the other thing I'm going to talk
about. So, although I'll come back several more times to luck, I want to
dispose of this matter of luck as being the sole criterion whether you do
great work or not. I claim you have some, but not total, control over it. And
I will quote, finally, Newton on the matter. Newton said, ``If others would
think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.''

\-----

There's lots of gem in this piece. Worth re-reading periodically.

------
6ren
> I think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class
> work because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in
> the result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be
> worthwhile in itself.

What are the important problems in computer science today?

 _NP=P; "real" AI; speech recognition, natural language processing, image
recognition; multi-core processing; ... ?_

What are the important problems in webapps; the cloud; mobile?

 _OR impedance mismatch; ... ?_

Some guide are things are improving rapidly (an indicator of demand for
improvement) and painful annoyances.

 _EDIT_ Sorry, I just meant them as separate questions. I've clarified by
using separate lines and adding some guesses.

~~~
p4bl0
I think what he means here is that even if one prove that P=NP, the result
itself will have little to no consequences on our daily lives. That is, except
if the proof is a constructive reduction from an NP-complete problem to a P
problem, but that's highly unlikely. However, the proof itself would be very
interesting, because it is likely to involve new technics that would surely be
appliable somewhere else and help science in general solve other problems.
Also having such a proof would certainly mean that the original question has
been reformulated, for instance in something which correspond better to real
life than the current, theoretical P vs NP separation. And that's of course
also worthy in itself because it means we understand this problem, and surely
some other more or less related problems, way better.

------
hboon
An inspirational read about how getting your priorities right plays a big role
in success.

