Mapreduce Debate

It is amused to read David Dewitt and Micheal Stonebraker's attack on Google's Map-reduce framework, and even more fun to read all the comments followed.

It's a typical fight between academia and industry. I particularly agreed that Joe. M. Hellerstein's comment that you'd have to admit "you lose" under the test of the real market. Rather than spending energy on arguing who is more advanced, I think a more fruitful way is to think why it happens and how to improve it.

Also liked what one of the commenter said:

"I really liked Feigenbaum's approach to these sorts of things. His group was doing things in the 80's that are only today being widely understood and adopted. But instead of arguing about how primitive modern techniques were compared to his work, he always worked with the young upstarts who were exploring an area that was new to them but old to academia, and gently guided them in the right direction without judging or bragging."

That's sth academia needed.