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Subject: Re: Can of worms - Was NLP Question
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"John" <nojgoalbyspam@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I personally don't believe that a thorough understanding of current systems
>is required to create a useful new system.  Although it is one approach, you
>may end up getting constrained within the existing system.

Artists (particularly writers) go through this a lot.  "How
can I be original, if I look at prior art?"  When Clemens said
that originality is the art of concealing sources, he meant
it.  Very few people are "accidentally" original, coming from
a vacuum; they're more likely to have been *inspired* by
something that already existed, and improved upon it.

Example from the programming world:  Notice how many "new"
programming languages are more or less BASIC or Pascal with
the keywords changed, and with less power.  This is what
happens when an author fails to familiarize himself with
the state of the art, because you can't intuit user
problems without having been a user.

That is, understanding isn't a requirement, per se, but having
a good understanding will give you a much better idea of what
you want to do, by illustrating the good points and major
pitfalls.  The frustration you'll feel at not remembering the
difference between "has" and "provides" in Inform (as a basic
example) will be invaluable when you start designing your own
approach to polymorphism.

[...]
