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Re:What, exactly, do philosophers do? by hdhzy on Monday September 18, 2017 @03:39PM (#15278839)
Haha, the description sounds exactly like software engineering. Let me deconstruct:

> There's a lot more reading that needs to be done before you can make a contribution.

Just like software engineering unless you count Hello Worlds as contributions. But even then one can do simple things like that in philosophy.

> A lot of it progresses by just reading the works of the established masters, getting ideas, and publishing your thoughts about what they had to say.

Sounds like reading white papers and RFCs to me.

> You don't start from scratch. You build on what is already there.

The same. Just check how much transpilers and leftpad like libraries a JS Hello World app needs!

And so on...

Re:What, exactly, do philosophers do? by sametmax on Monday September 18, 2017 @03:43PM (#15278870)
Exactly. Except with engineering you can actually test if your idea works in practice.