The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up • Hacker News Board

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#141

Post by dgreensp » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC

I'm loving these intelligent criticisms of the article.

My own biggest beef with the article is it entirely misses the deep point of Marie Kondo's work, which is about efficiency and joy. If the article is not actually a response to her philosophy and definition of tidiness, and just needed a cute title, well, that's confusing at the very least. The commenters who point out that codebases, for example, need to be reasonable for humans to work in, or that it sure is easier to change source code than a compiled binary, are on the right track.

Kondo's method is all about identifying the clutter _that is actually clutter_, and deleting it. Would you rather maintain a program that's 1000 lines, or 100? If the 1000-line program was written by you, for you, over the course of your life, and by your own admission is extremely messy and moderately unpleasant to deal with, containing lots of unused stuff, yet you run it, and modify it, every day, no one is going to force you to clean it up, but you can find joy in doing so.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#142

Post by shishircc » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

Both messiness and orderliness have their own place in work.

I find that to be particularly true when you are starting to experiment with some product or solution. At that time, you need to be messy (hacking a solution). The need initially is ability to quickly move in trying ideas and discarding ones that don't work.

Then you reach a time when you have figured out a very elegant solution that a user of product would just love. At this time, it is right opportunity to optimize for legibility and orderliness (refactoring) before your solution turns into a mess that works very well but no one can understand or update.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#143

Post by abdullahkhalids » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

basch wrote: post #102

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think people who never got captured didn't know that the matrix could be changed, so they just hid from the machines. Then someone figured out that the matrix could be controlled, and the fight to free all began. I think the "freed the first of us" means "freed to believe that the matrix could be defeated".

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#144

Post by chubbyrabbit » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 4:49 AM UTC

dimino wrote: post #131

uulu wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange, how did you come to the conclusion that this is a defense of "crap code"? For one thing - crappy code is most often less efficient than elegant code.

The example of the child being asked to clean his room reminds me a great deal of a bad engineer being asked to clean up his code.

"His room" and "his code" is not comparable in the context. "His code" is part of a business's product and can impact the livelihood of many people involved in the product including customers.

"His room" is a private space that doesn't affect other people. I don't tell my co-worker to clean up his side-project on github.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#145

Post by billti » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 4:51 AM UTC

I spent much of today doing some woodwork in the garage, and due to its untidiness, probably spent as much time looking for various tools as I did using them. (Not to mention tripping a time or two).

Working in a large code base that has little structure/consistency is another example of high cost/friction.

There is some benefit to organization.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#146

Post by klyrs » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

madengr wrote: post #41

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…

In our tour at work, they show off a 3D printed, computer optimized part. It looks very similar to that tensile structure; ver organic looking. The customer didn’t like the look, and they had to fill in some areas to make it look less alien.

Once, I found a curious challenge in optimizing a bitwise formula for a particular computation (by hand it took hours; brute-force, a program found the essentially-unique optimal solution in a fraction of a second). I showed it to a fellow mathematician... he was mad because he couldn't determine rhyme or reason in the solution I found. Wicked smart guy, outclasses me as a mathematician by far... but he essentially rejected my result because he couldn't ascertain how to reproduce it by hand (despite me having a relatively simple proof of optimality).

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#147

Post by ken » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

lugg wrote: post #107

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.

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

Or as Frank Vertosick pointed out in his book, mother nature wants life in general to continue, but doesn't give a shit whether any one individual lives or not.

Man-made structures do have some redundancy, but in general we don't build like that. When we install brackets like the one in the picture, we don't install a few extra ones with the expectation that some will fail. We make them much stronger than necessary ("safety factor") so we're sure none will ever fail.

Mother nature can't afford to put all her eggs in one basket. Humans often can't afford not to.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#148

Post by si1entstill » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

dgreensp wrote: post #141

I'm loving these intelligent criticisms of the article. My own biggest beef with the article is it entirely misses the deep point of Marie Kondo's work, which is about efficiency and joy. If the article is not actually a response to her philosophy and definition of tidiness, and just needed a cute title, well, that's confusing at the very least. The commenters who point out that codebases, for example, need to be rea…

Based on the content, it seems to be primarily a clever title. I don't think the author is trying to refute a hypothetical group of engineers who are trying to apply Marie Kondo's philosophy to software. (Not that there aren't devs who are doing that, but that doesn't seem to be the author's goal.)

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#149

Post by ryacko » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #15

api wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge corporations and governments are kind of like hybrid silicon/meat AIs and that's exactly what they've done. I think this is the most likely outcome.

No, corporations and governments flatten and simplify everything until they can understand it. The next step, once we have powerful enough systems, is to embrace the chaos and use it. E.g. older houses were hand-built, but nowadays houses are built with straight walls and standardised heights for everything so that mass-produced furniture can fit in them. But if in the future our furniture is made on-demand by AIs, t…

Hopefully with more advanced stone-cutting technology, I could have a house with Inca-style stone walls. No reason for bricks to be rectangular.

Re: The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up

#150

Post by dimino » Mon, Nov 18, 2019, 6:48 AM UTC

chubbyrabbit wrote: post #144

dimino wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example of the child being asked to clean his room reminds me a great deal of a bad engineer being asked to clean up his code.

"His room" and "his code" is not comparable in the context. "His code" is part of a business's product and can impact the livelihood of many people involved in the product including customers. "His room" is a private space that doesn't affect other people. I don't tell my co-worker to clean up his side-project on github.

You could tell your coworker (or your direct report if we're taking this analogy seriously) to clean up his work area. A child's room isn't a completely private space, and it's where they do their "work" (getting dressed, homework, play time, etc.).