[userbinator]

Indeed, it's often more fun than playing the game itself; but then again, I'm someone who has been taking things apart since I was very young (and not surprisingly, got into trouble a few times for it...) I suspect RE is something that's closer to what those in the other sciences do, i.e. analysis and thinking more about how/why things are the way they are, rather than what they can build; which is why not a lot of developers (who almost always build, except when they have to debug) seem to have any interest/skills of RE much if at all.

[marcan_42]

I've previously described physicists as reverse engineers of the universe (and biologists as reverse engineers of nature) :-)

They really are much closer disciplines than most people might imagine.

[mikorym]

Just trying to read a mathematical paper is like RE. You could take the approach that you try to follow every step and pause until you have the full specification, but that would take months. And more importantly, it's unlikely that you are willing or able to just do that one paper over the course of 6 months.

Or, like people do in RE, you fall back to things you know (OP knew hex, decimal and binary before he encountered the reflected codes he talks about) and you try to force the paper through your personal veil. I guess when people reverse engineer hardware you follow the routes you took (maybe taking months) the first time you took something apart.

Usually, it makes sense to do so because the reason why you read the paper in the first place is because you think that it has some connection with your own work.

In Quantum Mechanics circles, many authors have different mathematical backgrounds, so just translating what they are doing and thinking is already RE. A good example of this is logical semantics: There are countless flavours of how to write logic down, each with their own symbols and motivations. I would prefer if any logic that you end up with is the internal logic of a category, but analogously this would be like Apple forcing everyone to use their hardware connector pins.

A paper usually does have a path that is chosen by the author, but the RE component is inevitable if you want the paper to be in context with your own reasearch. Otherwise I guess it would be more like a class or university module, where you are following along, but you don't really have an intention of building on the subject matter in your own time. Science also has the disadvantage to newcomers that you don't know how much has already been done, and hence you are forced to have endless lectures to just bring you up to speed.

[imtringued]

The real reason is that open source software completely eliminates the need for reverse engineering. RE only makes sense when you don't have access to the source code. Doing things like private server emulation for an MMORPG might sound cool but the reality is that half the game content exists server side. You're not able to invest enough resources to rebuild the original experience and even if you could why not spend those resources on your own game? The demand for reverse engineering is pretty small.

[mysterydip]

There's many MMOs that now officially only exist as memory, either shut down or altered in such a way that they aren't the same games anymore. Some people don't want to make their own game, they want to play the game they used to with friends/family years ago that is now unavailable. The amount of community effort put into some private servers is impressive. I wouldn't spend my own time doing it, but I'm glad there are people that do.

[cycloptic]

I just find that more disappointing because the copyright holder is positioned to be able to open-source or public-domain-dedicate the material but they don't for various reasons and it rots on a backup drive somewhere or gets lost, and now unnecessary duplication of effort must occur to recreate it.

Often it seems rather paradoxical in nature because the main reason they don't open-source it is that they're waiting for a time in the future when the demand rises and it will be worth something again, and yet the increased demand only happens because of the efforts of reverse engineers keeping the community alive. It's almost always impossible for the reverse engineers to legally get paid for this work too. The only hopes for that is either for the copyright holders to raise enough money and decide to hire them, or to do an anonymous patreon and hope it doesn't attract the wrong kind of attention.

[Rerarom]

Indeed, and conversely that's why to a researcher like me RE feels like the only branch of coding that actually achieves something (emotionally; intelectually I know of course that's not true).

One of the reasons I was attracted to computers when I was a kid was figuring out Windows secrets.

[geitir]

That comparison was really insightful to me