Gigantism is a never-ending temptation • Hacker News Board

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#11

Post by bell-cot » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

Full title of the article - "Gigantism Is a Never-Ending Temptation for Engineers and Designers"

My reaction - Giantism is not that much of a temptation for actual engineers and designers. It is a huge temptation for the Sales Dept., PR Dept., management egos, customer egos, and kids. Admittedly, some folks with "Engineer" or "Designer" in their job titles are, mentally, more in those other places.

Somewhat related, but not actually giantism, is feature bloat. Instead of the biggest just-plain-knife in the world, you have the Swiss Army Knife with the most different blades & tools & accessories & crap. That's more often a temptation for engineers & designers.

A different beast, which can be mistaken for giantism, is economics-driven limit-pushing. Doesn't matter if it's large overall size (wind turbines), small feature size (IC's), high efficiency (commercial jet engines), high pressure (rocket engine combustion chambers), or what. The company which can reliably out-do its rivals in the metric is well-positioned to crush them, via better economic performance. (Perhaps making the company a financial giant...)

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#12

Post by smitty1e » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 12:56 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #5

Meh, sometimes when you’re optimizing things you realize new limits. This is how you figure out what works and what doesn’t, you try. Simplifying failures down to “it was too big” and acting like this should be a priori obvious is silly. A small amount of stuff is always going to exist a few standard deviations away from the mean. Sometimes it’ll move the mean, sometimes it will fail. Backpressure from being too much…

The human desire to tinker bears tempering with much communication and moral thought.

We're on the cusp of some genetic triumphs...and horror stories.

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#13

Post by globular-toast » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

They lost me when they said the Ford F-150 is not gigantism but actually the right size. It's certainly the right size for some things, as is an 18-wheel articulated truck. But it's not the right size for the vast majority of the time it's actually used. Gigantism seems to be a temptation for consumers just as much as engineers and designers. People are tempted by that unwieldy vehicle or large house and don't consider the practicality or running cost.

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#14

Post by JasonFruit » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

On the other hand, you have the man who built several of the biggest, which were also in many cases the first, successes in several different areas of engineering: Isambard Kingdom Brunel[0]. He built the largest ocean-going vessel of his time (the Great Western and the even bigger Great Eastern), the first tunnel under a navigable river (the Thames Tunnel), the longest bridge of its time (the Clifton Suspension Bridge), as well as little things like the Great Western Railway. He was a pretty inspiring person, and the biography his son wrote of him is excellent reading[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel

[1]: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/41210

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#15

Post by crawl_soever » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

When are we going to have a viable compact smartphone again? They have slowly became larger until they're so gigantic I cannot fit in one hand. Oh Sony Xperia Compact. I hope you don't ever die!

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#16

Post by rockostrich » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

crawl_soever wrote: post #15

When are we going to have a viable compact smartphone again? They have slowly became larger until they're so gigantic I cannot fit in one hand. Oh Sony Xperia Compact. I hope you don't ever die!

The iPhone SE is ~5.5" by ~2.5" which is pretty compact which isn't that much bigger than the Xperia Compact.

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#17

Post by moonbug » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #5

Meh, sometimes when you’re optimizing things you realize new limits. This is how you figure out what works and what doesn’t, you try. Simplifying failures down to “it was too big” and acting like this should be a priori obvious is silly. A small amount of stuff is always going to exist a few standard deviations away from the mean. Sometimes it’ll move the mean, sometimes it will fail. Backpressure from being too much…

Don't be the "meh" guy.

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#18

Post by dragontamer » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

1940s era Battleships are probably unnecessary gigantism, but it should be noted that the 'massive' ironclads of the 1890s were completely obsolete by the much bigger, heavily armored Dreadnoughts. (The battleships of 1890s were too small and impractical, leading to the development of the 1900s era bigger ships)

The only reason Super-Battleships of the 1940s didn't work was because aircraft carriers were better. Whenever a bigger ship went up against smaller ones, the results were spectacular. See Bismark vs HMS Hood (Battle of Denmark Strait) for example.

Battleships basically shoot 1 ton per gun per shot, and have broadsides of 9 guns in a unified and coordinated Salvo. These are the biggest guns ever made.

------

Big guns shoot further. Bigger ships can afford thicker steel for more armor. Smaller guns of the Destroyer and Cruiser classes simply cannot damage Battleships in combat, too little range and even if they had the range, not enough penetrating power to go through the armor.

So if you have a smaller ship, you gotta sail into range while giving your opponents battleship first strike (and all 1940s ships had computerized firing systems, mechanical computers but they worked). So they were quite accurate with these big guns too.

------

Tanks went a similar evolution in Germany. Other countries (France / Russia) put effort into heavy tanks, but Germany first focused on light tanks...

Until the German shells were bouncing off of their foreign counterpart's armor. So the Germans later made King Tigers, as bigger is in fact better in some circumstances.

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#19

Post by whoisthemachine » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

I think it might be better to say "extremes are a never-ending temptation", just as we try to make the biggest things, there's also plenty of effort put into making the smallest things. As another commenter mentioned, this is often less because of engineers' desires than because of product departments' needs for the next best product, which often just means the original product, but "more".

Re: Gigantism is a never-ending temptation

#20

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #13

They lost me when they said the Ford F-150 is not gigantism but actually the right size. It's certainly the right size for some things, as is an 18-wheel articulated truck. But it's not the right size for the vast majority of the time it's actually used. Gigantism seems to be a temptation for consumers just as much as engineers and designers. People are tempted by that unwieldy vehicle or large house and don't consid…

The biggest car we own is a Honda CR-V, but if I had to tow a boat 3+ times a year or carry sheet goods once a month, I’d buy a truck appropriate for that and drive it the other 350-ish days of the year. It’s not practical to rent a truck every month or for a week at a time just to save a little money every month. Are there trucks sold that never do a single truck thing in their life? Probably, but probably not as many as you’d expect.