[honie]

I don't disagree with you on the potential financial burdens faced by PhD students but, in this case, and if I haven't missed anything, the infrastructural barrier is not high:

> All experi-ments use a single thread on a Macbook Pro with a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-4960HQ processor. Unless stated otherwise, all timing results use five trials, with each trial reporting the fastest among 20 executions.

It may also be worth nothing that, even as a hobby, one can actually do a lot with modern hardware if you scope your project well. There is also a lot of free resources such as CoLab available to those who have very limited computing power at home/work.

Last but not least, there is also nothing stopping you from announcing your results on arXiv and, if you can be bothered (as a hobbyist), get it published in a peer-reviewed journal.

So if you still have ideas, I encourage you to go ahead and try them! :)

[antonzabirko]

I meant learning barrier. If i had the money i likely would go for it though!

[ltbarcly3]

I really don't know how to respond other than to say:

"I would have done this years ago if I knew how to do it" is fantastically narcissistic.

[honie]

I see where you are coming from, but I personally don't find the comment narcissistic: I read it the OP of the comment thinking out load, saying "ah! It's nice to know that I have thought about something similar, and someone made the effort to show that it works!".

[m00x]

Another form of: "I could totally have built Google or Amazon if I wanted to, I'm just a lazy genius."

[thebooktocome]

I think it's pretty inappropriate to gloss financial hardship as laziness.

[antonzabirko]

What? No im saying it's one of the ideas i worked on before i switched away from the field...?