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Is it bad if I have mixed feelings about this? With such skills, why not invent something new?

I think if I were to build some stuff from scratch, maybe I would try to build a gene assembler (whatever they called that thing, where you can feed a gene sequence into it and it assembles a real gene from it). That's something you can't buy in every supermarket yet.

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You have to start somewhere, don't you think? He can't just start at the top and assume he knows how to build something. And there are certainly many lessons to be learned by building something that is already well understood (as many people seem to be attesting to in these comments). Consider it "practice before the big game," where "the big game" is hopefully something he does in ten years that makes people's lives a little better.

I think there's a lot of understanding to gain from building a computer from scratch. We've abstracted computing so much that starting over gives you a unique perspective on some of the big problems still out there, as well as a definite appreciation for the innovations we've come up with--even if it's nothing new.

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