Hasnain says:

Great read on ideation and how inspiration for work comes about.

"We could view my investigations of Cookie Clicker’s mechanisms as ‘basic research’, i.e., research without an immediate application in mind. There is evidence that basic research in the sciences leads to productivity increases in manufacturing. Eloquent arguments have been made that forgoing basic research is costly, that “when academic research starts demonstrating industry relevance is when funding should be cut off, not augmented.”

Or, taking it down a peg, we could simply label what I was doing as gathering ‘useless knowledge’, which like basic research does not have an immediate application in mind, and additionally does not even seek to answer questions considered useful in some way. Here again, mine would not be the first story lending credence to the idea that useless knowledge is, ultimately, useful!

But perhaps the simplest way to view this episode was as a playful, recreational activity which through sheer dumb luck gave me the skills needed to solve an important problem in my work life. My colleague Titus Barik analysed how programmers talk about programming as play, involving ‘spontaneous and creative expression’, ‘experimentation’, and ‘purposeless, ludic activity’. He found that many programmers reflect on episodes of playful programming as joyful experiences that catalysed learning."

Posted on 2023-07-22T22:22:54+0000