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I could do that in a weekend (2016)

danluu.com

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Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#21

Post by spaetzleesser »

lhorie wrote: post #9

I don't see nearly as many people claiming Google could be built in a weekend, but I do see that sentiment a lot in threads about Uber. It's easy to think it's a simple app, but there was a great response from a former EM highlighting just why that isn't so[0]. > This reminds me of a common fallacy we see in unreliable systems, where people build the happy path with the idea that the happy path is the “real” work, an…

On the one hand I agree but on the other hand it’s really much easier to be a follower and avoid the mistakes the pioneers have made. I am pretty sure there are a ton of legacy things in the Uber platform that are obsolete now and you wouldn’t have to implement if you stated from scratch. But you would also probably run into the same issues that Uber took many years to solve and you probably also would need years. So many be the advantage of being second isn’t as much as thought initially.

I often think SpaceX was able to move that quickly because they could learn from decades of experience of NASA and others what works and what doesn’t.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#22

Post by meowzero »

stevieb89 wrote: post #10

Any chance you could add, that wide text is really hard to read body > *:not(pre) { max-width: 600px; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto; } pre { max-width: 1200px; margin: 40px auto; background: #f6f6f6; padding: 16px; }

Safari and Firefox has reader view. I'm not sure about Chrome or IE since I don't use those. I'm sure they'll have something similar.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#23

Post by bern4444 »

Fun article, but exceptionally difficult to read. I know some people like using plain ol html, but just a few lines of CSS would vastly improve the reading experience. I know its from 2016, but still.

Eyes read best when content is a few hundred pixels long. Content should be centered etc.

It's pretty terrible as it is

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#25

Post by burnished »

pgm8705 wrote: post #5

Similar thing with comments whenever a Slack related article ends up on HN. "I don't understand how a shitty IRC clone is worth billions of dollars!" or "Why would anyone use Slack when Matrix is free!" I often wonder if these folks haven't even bothered to actually use the software and realize how much more it does beyond sending messages back and forth and/or how much detail and thought goes into making it usable f…

I think competency in the domain reduces friction, and without reflection folks generally don't seem to realize that their experiences are usually specialized. So yeah, I think it's a combo of not trying the new thing (because they already have a comfy work flow) and not honestly assessing how the knowledge they take for granted changes their experience. Not that it's that easy of course.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#26

Post by shuckles »

moksly wrote: post #4

I think this article raises a lot of good points about the weekend prototype, but I also think there is some merit in the question of “what do all those people do?”. I’ve worked in digitalisation in the public sector of Denmark for quite some time. A few years ago I was part of the group who redefined our national principals for architecture in municipality IT systems. The whole thing is called rammearkitekturen whic…

In cases like this, it’s always useful to have an expansive definition of “user”. For example, day to day experiences for caretakers might have degraded under the new patient information system, but maybe it’s now easier to produce charts which bosses want. For better or worse, they are users of the system as well. To whom a change is worthwhile often leads to unexpected beneficiaries with unexpected motivations.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#27

Post by NortySpock »

moksly wrote: post #4

I think this article raises a lot of good points about the weekend prototype, but I also think there is some merit in the question of “what do all those people do?”. I’ve worked in digitalisation in the public sector of Denmark for quite some time. A few years ago I was part of the group who redefined our national principals for architecture in municipality IT systems. The whole thing is called rammearkitekturen whic…

Thinking back on the overall strategy, would it have been better to "just" digitize, OCR and timestamp the coordinating documents for logging and audit purposes? A "document management system" rather than "an eldercare management system"?

That way it's "just" "Pull up the most recent documents relating to or updated for patient Doe, Jane" or "What has changed in the medications prescribed in this district?"

The Document Management System would still manage all the PDFs or caretaker notes, but would (eventually) be searchable, and would still support the primary workflow of "I just want to see all the recent documentation for my patient" or "This is caretaker Alex's most recent route assignment document".

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#28

Post by lisper »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #8

One other thing he touched on in passing: people are assuming they'd know what to build from the start. Even in relatively trivial applications a lot of work goes into finding the right way to express what you're trying to build. I recently worked on a small app and spent 40 hours trying out different approaches to the user interface. The solution I went with could be coded up in about 2 hours, but I had to do 38 hou…

Ron's second law: The hardest part of getting what you want is figuring out what it is.

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#29

Post by OJFord »

slongfield wrote: post #16
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #8

One other thing he touched on in passing: people are assuming they'd know what to build from the start. Even in relatively trivial applications a lot of work goes into finding the right way to express what you're trying to build. I recently worked on a small app and spent 40 hours trying out different approaches to the user interface. The solution I went with could be coded up in about 2 hours, but I had to do 38 hou…

“I didn't have time to write you a simple UI, so I wrote you a complicated one instead.” -- Mark Twain, paraphrased.

Blaise Pascal, translated and paraphrased. (Or at least as a lower-bound on its age anyway.)

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

Re: I could do that in a weekend (2016)

#30

Post by jldugger »

pbreit wrote: post #14

"I could do that in a weekend" is obviously idiotic but why choose Google as the example (possibly the hardest piece of software to replicate)?

If you follow the citation trail:

0. Dan writes an article about marginal employment decisions, which cites 1. Alex Clemmer wrote (http://blog.nullspace.io/building-search-engines.html) about building a search engine to compete with Google, who cites 2. John Peebles, who wrote (https://peebs.org/2014/01/04/we-need-viable-search-engine-co...) about the urgent need for a viable competitor to Google, saying:

> I wonder if we haven’t all been hypnotised by the complexity, much of which is marketing hype, and have missed the enormous opportunity that exists right in front of our noses. Does the next search engine have to be as big, involved in as many things, employ as many people, and fight on the same footing to be accomplish the goal of providing a counterpoint to Google?

This article was upvoted fairly well on on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7011472), though the top comments are all in agreement this is not a simple task. This zeitgeist, along with Dan's personal experience on the subject, is why he wrote the article using Google as the example.

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