'Reinventing the wheel'에 해당되는 글 1건

  1. 2008.03.26 Reinventing the wheel
일반2008. 3. 26. 21:38

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinventing_the_wheel

Reinventing the wheel (aka. "Not built here") is a phrase that means a generally accepted technique or solution is ignored in favor of a locally invented solution. To "reinvent the wheel" is to duplicate a basic method that has long since been accepted and even taken for granted. The inspiration for this idiomatic metaphor lies in the fact that the wheel is the archetype of human ingenuity, both by virtue of the added power and flexibility it affords its users, and also in the ancient origins which allow it to underlie much, if not all, of modern technology. As it is not considered to have operational flaws, an attempt to reinvent it would be pointless and add no value to the object, and would be a waste of time, diverting the investigator's resources from possibly more worthy goals which his or her skills could advance more substantially. At the same time, however, "reinventing the wheel" is an important tool in the instruction of complex ideas. Rather than providing students simply with a list of known facts and techniques and expecting them to incorporate these ideas perfectly and rapidly, the instructor instead will build up the material anew, leaving the student to work out those key steps which embody the reasoning characteristic of the field. The phrase is sometimes used without derision, especially when the user applies it reflexively, possibly to indicate that although his or her activities might be perceived as merely reinventing the wheel, they actually possess additional value. This added value may work around software licensing incompatibilities or around technical limitations present in parts or modules provided by third-parties. An example would be to implement a bubble sort for a script written in Javascript and destined to be embedded in a web page. The bubble sort algorithm is well known and readily available from libraries for software developers writing general-purpose applications in C++ or Java but Javascript by default provides no such sorting algorithm. Hence, if a developer wants to use bubble sort on his web page, he must "reinvent the wheel" by reimplementing the algorithm. He could conceivably copy it from another web page but then he could run into copyright and software licensing issues. Reinventing the wheel in this case provides the missing functionality and also avoids copyright issues.
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