The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

by Richard Hamming

In the early evolution of computers I soon turned to the problem of doing many small problems on a big machine. I realized, in a very real sense, I was in the mass production of a variable product—I should organize things so I could cope with most of the problems which would arise in the next year, while at the same time not knowing what, in detail, they would be. It was then I realized that computers have opened the door much more generally to the mass production of a variable product, regardless of what it is: numbers, words, word processing, making furniture, weaving, or what have you. They enable us to deal with variety without excessive standardization, and hence we can evolve more rapidly to a desired future! You see it at the moment applied to computers themselves! Computers, with some guidance from humans, design their own chips, and computers are assembled, more or less, automatically from standard parts; you say what things you want in your computer and the particular computer is then made. Some computer manufacturers are now using almost total machine assembly of the parts with almost no human intervention. It was the attitude that I was in the mass production of a variable product, with all its advantages and disadvantages, which caused me to approach the ibm 650, as I told you about in the last chapter. By spending about one man year in total effort over a period of six months, I found at the end of the year I had more work done than if I had approached each p...