One way to do applied research

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In some of the communities I hang around in1, there’s a fondness for the kind of industrial research that happened at places like PARC and Bell Labs. Things like Smalltalk, Mesa/Cedar, and Plan 9 not only introduced new ideas but demonstrated them in practical, working systems. If you want to actually do research like this, how should you go about it? There are a couple of obvious strategies. One is to look for unsolved problems — say, “addressing the scale-up problem in visual programming”. Another strategy is to solve an old problem with new techniques: “X, with CRDTs”. Both of these lead to something that is obviously novel, but it might not really be useful. But there’s another strategy, which Alex and I took with Ohm. I don’t think it’s groundbreaking, or even original, but it’s worth talking about because (imo) it’s a less obvious way to do research. The idea is this: aim for practical utility first, by building something that addresses an actual need that you have. You don’t nee

One way to do applied research Patrick Dubroy One way to do applied research November 7, 2024 In some of the communities I hang around in 1 , there’s a fondness for the kind of industrial research that happened at places like PARC and Bell Labs. Things like Smalltalk, Mesa/Cedar, and Plan 9 not only introduced new ideas but demonstrated them in practical, working systems. If you want to actually do research like this, how should you go about it? There are a couple of obvious strategies. One is to look for unsolved problems — say, “addressing the scale-up problem in visual programming”. A

One way to do applied research

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