Software Cinema

在 Numb3rs , Season 3, Episode 7 : Blackout (不知道為甚官方網站沒有這一集的 Recap ) 中後段, Fleinhardt 提到了費曼 ( Richard Feynman ) 的一場演說 : There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom ( 原文, 中文 ).

在費曼的原文中其實跟物理學淵源比較深, 但是 Fleinhardt 在劇中的解讀卻很有意思.

Fleinhardt : Well, what I mean to say is... you see,all along you've been applying
a kind of bottom-up analysis.
Fleinhardt : It all started with the unfortunate gentleman who was electrocuted.
Reeves : Alejandro Munoz.
Fleinhardt : That's right,and then you worked your way up to Donahue
Fleinhardt : And now you're working up to someone above Donahue.
Reeves : That's standard procedure. We're always looking for the bigger fish.
Fleinhardt : Yeah,but how you know you're even fishing in the right direction ?
Fleinhardt : You see, in 1959, Richard Feynman gave a very famous lecture.
Fleinhardt : It was called,"there's plenty of room at the bottom," and it altered the thinking of a whole generation of scientists
Fleinhardt : Because it changed their focus to thinking smaller and smaller instead of larger.
Fleinhardt : Now,see,you've gone from Munoz to Donahue, and now you're long even farther up the chain.
Fleinhardt : Perhaps you need to go in the opposite direction.
Reeves : You're suggesting that the plan to blow up the substation just started with Munoz.
Fleinhardt : I think it's worthy of consideration.

我覺得也很適用於軟體工程中的研究. 很容易地我們在書上, Paper 上會看到貌似很了不起的 Process, Theory, Architecture, 或是 Tool, System, 但是沒有仔細深入想卻很難回答一些極為基本的問題 : 為什麼 Paper 作者會想到解決這個問題 ? 這個問題會在哪裡出現, Paper 作者怎們知道這是一般性的問題 ? 我會不會遇到這個問題 ?

我覺得我直到博二才認識到, 一切從小地方做起想起. 很多 Paper 所真正解決的問題, 都起源於作者在實際作 Software Production 的過程中所遇到的小問題 ( 也有可能是大問題啦, 但是通常大問題就是一堆小問題 ), 而小問題總是在不同的 Software Production 中會反複出現.

好的研究題目其實就在你每天寫 Software 的思考過程中而已.