[aclimatt]

Both direct and indirect tools are absolutely equally necessary, and my apologies if that sentiment did not come through -- I would never debate the usefulness or effectiveness of these tools, but instead their fitness for achieving a specific goal.

The parallel to curing cancer was mainly drawn from this paragraph:

I could've become a doctor. All signs pointed to me likely being a very good one. In doing so, I would have gone to work and done my best to save lives every day. In that context, how is some programming environment a greater contribution to the world? Truthfully, it wouldn't be if I just set out to build an IDE. But that's not what I did - Light Table is just a vehicle for the real goal. While an IDE probably won't directly save someone's life, the things people are able to build with it could do exactly that.

To your main point:

If a new "text editor" ends up providing us a much more efficient means of creating things like Watson, in what way is that not just as important as curing any one disease?

Absolutely. I'm not arguing its importance, I'm arguing its effectiveness at achieving a mission, which I interpreted as curing cancer / saving lives. If you "increase everything by 1%", that is fantastic! And it has furthered many different missions 1% closer to their goals. This is very much important and necessary to the advancement of society, but its mission specifically should be put into context.

A microscope is a fundamental tool to help scientists do their best work. Thus, a person setting out to build one, in my opinion, has the opportunity to profoundly impact science's understanding of the human body and the world we live in. This understanding, further, can help scientists achieve their missions of curing disease, et cetera. But while the microscope plays a very important role in science, I believe it is unfair to the scientists for the microscope maker to believe that he is accomplishing his mission of curing disease by inventing one. Rather, he should be achieving his mission of helping our understanding of science, and/or furthering the missions of his users.

[Hoffenheimer]

I get your point, I really do. It's a decent argument, but if that's his gasoline, let him use it. Motivation is a hard thing to come by and his story just illustrates how hard it can be to focus and build something when dealing with emotional issues.

I don't think it hurts anyone when he says he's helping solve cancer, he's not stealing anyone's thunder. There's plenty of evidence of tool/library developers not getting any credit in the end product. If someone directly finds a cure using Light Table as their IDE, I'm pretty damn sure not a lot of people are going to seek out Chris and congratulate him on curing cancer. But he would've helped and that's the important thing. So let him have his motivation and keep building things.