[heavyset_go]

You've never had to reverse engineer the thinking and ideas that went behind code written by someone else/you a year ago?

[greatgib]

No, because so far you "engineered" nothing. You just studied it, tried to understand it, and explain or teach it.

If you had reverse engineered it, you would have tried to "recreate something" that does not exist to do the same.

So, if you have a binary code, you recreate the source code that in theory could allow you to recreate the binary.

If you have the source code, I guess that would be when you are missing pieces of info that allows you to run this code like it is done by others...

[heavyset_go]

Disagree that reverse engineering necessarily requires something to be recreated.

For example, simple hardware reversing can just be learning what, how and why something works, you don't need to "recreate" anything other than ideas.

[hackinthebochs]

You guys are being obtuse. Engineering is turning a spec into a more technical artifact, whether that's source code, machine code, physical hardware or something else. Reverse engineering is then reserving the process of engineering, recovering the semantic artifact from the engineering artifact. That the OP is using the term in the sense of recovering the semantic insights from the cuda kernels is a fine application of the concept.