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The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

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Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#101

Post by smabie »

vkou wrote: post #62
afpx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does if it’s a requirement for keeping employees from quitting.

I can't imagine quitting because the code I work on sucks. It's not like I'm getting paid by the feature I ship. If it takes 20 hours to ship an 8-hour feature, it doesn't matter, I still get the same paycheque every two weeks. My job is to show up, and work with the situation that exists. I can, however, imagine quitting if my manager is a shitty person. People don't quit work - they quit managers.

So would you work the rest of your life before retirement to dig a hole and then fill it up again, over and over. Let’s say you get to make 10x whatever you are earning now. Oh, and, the manager is a nice guy, he gives you lemonade and stuff on breaks.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#102

Post by basch »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #50
basch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Matrix. I always thought it would be interesting to have a prequel about the first person to escape. Office Space meets X Files, and the order of the complexity slowly becomes more apparent, until the movie turns into Playtime.

There was no first person to escape, there were people who survived the war with the machines and were never "in the matrix" to begin with. You should check out The Animatrix.

MORPHEUS: When the Matrix was first built there was a man born inside that had the ability to change what he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was this man that freed the first of us and taught us the secret of the war; control the Matrix and you control the future.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#103

Post by basch »

kyriakos wrote: post #22
basch wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Matrix. I always thought it would be interesting to have a prequel about the first person to escape. Office Space meets X Files, and the order of the complexity slowly becomes more apparent, until the movie turns into Playtime.

I am not sure the story suggests a first person escaped. More like there were always some people who never got captured and added to the matrix who freed others.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21560371

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#104

Post by microcolonel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #99
sean2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there's some downsides to that. If a part in my car fails, the mechanic pulls it out and bolts in a new one without much consideration for the rest of the system. If a part of my body fails, there's a slim chance I might be able to get a replacement from another person, and I'll have to be on immuno-supressents for life, and very expensive people will be needed to perform the installation, and things often…

A good point, and cars are a perfect example. Older cars tend to be less efficient than new ones, but there was a point in time not too long ago when you could repair anything in your car with a welder, some elbow grease, and a free afternoon. New cars of today tend to require expensive somewhat expensive specialists to fix, and I've been hearing that the future is in cars that refuse to start unless the ECU can cryp…

> New cars of today tend to require expensive somewhat expensive specialists to fix

Not for any practical reason. The tolerances on some parts are tighter, but in general anyone who takes the same interest that the average man took in the '80s can repair the vast majority of a current vehicle, safely, as long as they're not deliberately impeded by a computer.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#105

Post by microcolonel »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #49
ken wrote: post #36

> When computers design things, they look very different. Yes, because the computer assumes they're not going to change. The "tensile structure" looks cool now, but throw it in the back of a truck for 3 months and see if it's still algorithmically perfect. Parts get beat up. Tabs get bent a little. Maybe we'll want to grind off one of those tabs that we're not using because it's in the way, or weld on a new one. With…

There are ways to make such "organic" structures more resillient. Life is one huge proof of that. One of the reason biologists and medical researchers have so much trouble figuring how anything works in living organisms is because in biology, there are very few clear boundaries; every process is mixed up with a lot of other ones. And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

There's a lot of hubris in imagining that we can develop adequate models of reality. It's relatively simple in an enclosed space, less so "in a truck bed" as my fellow commenter puts it.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#106

Post by TeMPOraL »

microcolonel wrote: post #104
TeMPOraL wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good point, and cars are a perfect example. Older cars tend to be less efficient than new ones, but there was a point in time not too long ago when you could repair anything in your car with a welder, some elbow grease, and a free afternoon. New cars of today tend to require expensive somewhat expensive specialists to fix, and I've been hearing that the future is in cars that refuse to start unless the ECU can cryp…

> New cars of today tend to require expensive somewhat expensive specialists to fix Not for any practical reason. The tolerances on some parts are tighter, but in general anyone who takes the same interest that the average man took in the '80s can repair the vast majority of a current vehicle, safely, as long as they're not deliberately impeded by a computer.

> as long as they're not deliberately impeded by a computer

But I meant exactly that - at least from the stories I hear (I don't own a new enough car), half of the breakage in modern cars seems to require interfacing with the computer to at least clear an error flag. I once helped a guy with a software project, and learned that he's operating a workshop fixing a specific car brand. He showed me the device he uses to interface with the computer, and explained to me how the official software costs such ridiculous amounts of money that he instead hired some Chinese company that would remote-connect to his laptop and do some trickery to keep the software work without the license. Neither official nor the "unofficial" route seems to me to be accessible to a regular car owner.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#107

Post by lugg »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #49
ken wrote: post #36

> When computers design things, they look very different. Yes, because the computer assumes they're not going to change. The "tensile structure" looks cool now, but throw it in the back of a truck for 3 months and see if it's still algorithmically perfect. Parts get beat up. Tabs get bent a little. Maybe we'll want to grind off one of those tabs that we're not using because it's in the way, or weld on a new one. With…

There are ways to make such "organic" structures more resillient. Life is one huge proof of that. One of the reason biologists and medical researchers have so much trouble figuring how anything works in living organisms is because in biology, there are very few clear boundaries; every process is mixed up with a lot of other ones. And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

Life is incredibly resilient. Intelligent life is incredibly delicate and brittle.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#108

Post by TeMPOraL »

microcolonel wrote: post #105
TeMPOraL wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways to make such "organic" structures more resillient. Life is one huge proof of that. One of the reason biologists and medical researchers have so much trouble figuring how anything works in living organisms is because in biology, there are very few clear boundaries; every process is mixed up with a lot of other ones. And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

There's a lot of hubris in imagining that we can develop adequate models of reality. It's relatively simple in an enclosed space, less so "in a truck bed" as my fellow commenter puts it.

"Adequate" is in the eye of the beholder. We've been developing "adequate" models of reality ever since humans gained sentience; it's our needs and desires that grow, changing the criteria of adequacy with them.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#109

Post by lugg »

This is a strawman argument. And I wish people would stop relegating this type of system refactoring to some idiotic attempt to institute order for the sake of order.

Tidying systems up so they are organised "from my perspective" is not done, "for my benefit". It's done to make things easier to change.

Yes, it can make things less performance, no, most of the time that is irrelevant.

Refactoring is not optimisation. They are different things and both need to happen.

They both require you to make trade offs against future difficulties.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#110

Post by chewbacha »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #49
ken wrote: post #36

> When computers design things, they look very different. Yes, because the computer assumes they're not going to change. The "tensile structure" looks cool now, but throw it in the back of a truck for 3 months and see if it's still algorithmically perfect. Parts get beat up. Tabs get bent a little. Maybe we'll want to grind off one of those tabs that we're not using because it's in the way, or weld on a new one. With…

There are ways to make such "organic" structures more resillient. Life is one huge proof of that. One of the reason biologists and medical researchers have so much trouble figuring how anything works in living organisms is because in biology, there are very few clear boundaries; every process is mixed up with a lot of other ones. And yet the final result is incredibly resilient.

Sure, but that’s the result of almost 4 billion years of trial and error. I don’t think comparing that to a couple years of engineering trial and error is quite the same :p
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