Is it really 'Complex'? Or did we just make it 'Complicated'? [video]
One of the key points of the talk happens around the 32-37 minute mark, comparing the crew sizes of various ships.  He makes the point that the core of development is really putting together the requirements, not writing code.  Unfortunately we've put nearly all of the resources of our industry into engineering rather than science (tactics rather than strategies).  What he stated very succinctly is that a supercomputer can work out the tactics when provided a strategy, so why are we doing this all by hand?<p>That’s as far as I’ve gotten in the video so far but I find it kind of haunting that I already know what he’s talking about (brute force, simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, and other simple formulas that evolve a solution) and that these all run horribly on current hardware but are trivial to run on highly parallelized CPUs like the kind that can be built with FPGAs.  They also would map quite well to existing computer networks, a bit like SETI@home.<p>Dunno about anyone else, but nearly the entirety of what I do is a waste of time, and I know it, deep down inside.  That’s been a big factor in bouts with depression over the years and things like imposter syndrome.  I really quite despise the fact that I’m more of a translator between the spoken word and computer code than an engineer, architect or even craftsman.  Unfortunately I follow the money for survival, but if it weren’t for that, I really feel that I could be doing world-class work for what basically amounts to room and board.  I wonder if anyone here feels the same…