Academia lags behind practice
I would say that academic study just about always lags behind practice.
For example, we still don’t really know what “electricity” is, but, we use it every day.
Academic analysis seems to come in 2 stages
- quantify the relationships
- explain the relationships.
Tesla and Edison worked out how to use Electricity in practice.
Steinmetz, Wheatstone, Maxwell, et. al. created equations that quantified some of the effects.
I don’t know of any real explanation for what is going on at a deeper level (i.e. (2)).
Robert Distinti describes Electrical effects that haven’t yet been quantified, e.g. self-induction. And, he’s working on an explanation of what’s going on underneath.
Tesla probably figured out more about the explanation of electrical phenomena than he cared to share, or could put into words.
Historically, it has taken decades to leak academic Scientific study into Engineering. Practice, then Science, then Engineering. We can do better.
Appendix - Edit
After reading comments from the likes of Konrad Hinsen, I realized that my use of the phrase “practice” wasn’t sufficiently precise.
I have written an update in “2024-01-05-Fumbling Around and Applied Science”.
Appendix - See Also
References
https://guitarvydas.github.io/2004/01/06/References.html
Blogs
obsidian blogs (see blogs that begin with a date 202x-xx-xx-)
Videos
videos - programming simplicity playlist
Books
leanpub’ed (disclaimer: leanpub encourages publishing books before they are finalized - these books are WIPs)
Programming Simplicity Takeaways, and, Programming Simplicity Broad Brush
Discord
Programming Simplicity all welcome, I invite more discussion of these topics, esp. regarding Drawware and 0D
@paul_tarvydas
Mastodon
(tbd, advice needed re. most appropriate server(s))