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Sutherland’s ’63 Sketchpad thesis is a great counterpoint to my whining about troubles of doing both research & implementation. His final iteration (incl far-reaching abstraction insights) took ~1 year, including custom hardware! cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UC

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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

· Jan 18, 2021

It's been quite difficult to do both good research work and good implementation work! The essay also elaborates some of the implications of this thread: twitter.com/andy_matuschak

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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Blackwell and Rodden, who wrote the new preface for the thesis’s ’03 publication, note: "The struggles of developing custom hardware while also exploring far-reaching abstractions are also far removed from current research experiences.” Maybe that should be less frequently true!

8:23 PM · Jan 22, 2021TweetDeck

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(though as I’ve mentioned before the struggles of developing custom software while also exploring far-reaching abstractions are more than I can confidently handle!)

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Jan 22, 2021

I think about this picture all the time. What a handicap—and yet!

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why is custom hardware more removed now?

All Computers Are Punished

@nsfmc

Jan 22, 2021

i would totally expect most advisors focus students on developing the smallest amount of 'product' necessary to write their thesis (and really probably spend most of their time these days coaxing them to write _anything_ at all) that said, media lab was all about custom hw theses