Contributions through code only?

[ghost]

You write that and it's quiet a popular belief that contributions must come from code only at least in zeromq community. Ideas are valuable too. How do you frame non-code contributions?

[hintjens]

The best model for non-code would probably be wikipedia. There are many wikis that have produced large works and books on this basis. Ideas are not valuable however, they are cheap and mostly useless. Only real knowledge is useful (e.g. code that expresses knowledge of how to solve a problem is great; code that expresses an idea is usually not worth having).

[ghost]

Ideas are not valuable however, they are cheap and mostly useless.

Of course not. It takes effort to have.

Only real knowledge is useful (e.g. code that expresses knowledge of how to solve a problem is great; code that expresses an idea is usually not worth having).

You think there is such a thing as code pollution and ideas pollution?

[hintjens]

Yes, ideas pollution and code pollution are real things and the effort it
takes to make an idea or write code has no significance as to its value to
other people. Hence you can have 1000-page books filled with ideas that are
entirely bogus, and software systems with 100 million lines of code that
are just technical debt.

The only real value for science or engineering is accuracy. You can't get
that by collecting ideas any more than you can climb a mountain by
collecting hiking equipment.

On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 10:30 PM, amirouche [email protected] wrote:

Ideas are not valuable however, they are cheap and mostly useless.

Of course not. It takes effort to have.

Only real knowledge is useful (e.g. code that expresses knowledge of how
to solve a problem is great; code that expresses an idea is usually not
worth having).

You think there is such a thing as code pollution and ideas pollution?

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.

[ghost]

There is no such things as code pollution or idea pollution in the infinite space of the Internet. For a given context, idea or code can pollute, but it's not because it pollutes, that it shouldn't exist.

[hintjens]

Space in peoples' head isn't infinite, so if you shout one idea loud enough
it will certainly drive out others. Similarly, software takes effort to
maintain, package, document, learn. If it's filled with code no-one really
needs, that extra cost means that real needs won't be met.

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 10:59 PM, amirouche [email protected] wrote:

There is no such things as code pollution or idea pollution in the
infinite space of the Internet. For a given context, idea or code can
pollute, but it's not because it pollutes, that it shouldn't exist.

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[amirouche]

What I understand & agree with, is that «ideas can be pollution in a given context». Knowledge as I think about it, an idea that has a scientific proof, starts with an idea & can only stay “science” if it survive the adversity of other ideas through time