Well it all gets down to definitions and its more of a rule of thumb. However, I'm very suspicious of ideas that seem to be good only because the complexity gives them a certain gravitas. Its sort of a version or expansion (or misappropriation) of Gall's law:
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”
Sure, but you don't need to index the entire internet to build PageRank; only a subset of pages that form a graph. And, it's pretty easy to break the notion of building a search engine into smaller, discrete steps-- hell, I'd imagine that it could be done by two Stanford grad students.
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Well it all gets down to definitions and its more of a rule of thumb. However, I'm very suspicious of ideas that seem to be good only because the complexity gives them a certain gravitas. Its sort of a version or expansion (or misappropriation) of Gall's law:
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”
Please list a dozen. I like the challenge of attempting to break problems down into small parts. THx.
What less than a search engine can you build if you've got pagerank? in fact you can't even know if pagerank works unless you have a search engine.
Sure, but you don't need to index the entire internet to build PageRank; only a subset of pages that form a graph. And, it's pretty easy to break the notion of building a search engine into smaller, discrete steps-- hell, I'd imagine that it could be done by two Stanford grad students.