251–260 of 445 posts
I'm reading this as I listen to my noisy ass dishwasher in my small apartment running for over an hour now while I'm trying to go to bed. Yes, I very much wish it ran faster. It also matters when I have to run 2 loads because I let the dishes pile up.
> Yes, I very much wish it ran faster. Or more silent.
These comments seem to make a gloriously meta confirmation of the article's point. The article is saying that engineers (among others) have been known to optimise for the wrong thing. He uses a possibly inappropriate example of faster dishwashers. Then many of the commenters (quite likely engineers) optimise their comments on the thing they know about -- desirability or otherwise of faster dishwashers -- rather than…
A large chunk of that was cleaning and dishwashing.
Let me tell you that if I didn’t have a very fast dishwasher, I couldn’t do my job well. I was already juggling the time between supporting the cooks, keeping stuff clean and the dishwasher going. I used a fast and effective dishwasher, but any speed improvement would be welcome, among other things.
Engineers sometimes optimize for the wrong things, if they’re not involved with decisions and out of the loop.
But the reality is that there’s many more things that could benefit from optimization than things that don’t.
People definitely care about fast feedback loops and less time spent waiting. They might not always tell you in advance, because they assume it is like it is, but they _will_ tell you after the fact.
People who don’t care are typically disconnected from actual usage.
Whether that’s bosses and consultants who tell stories about “man hours vs cpu clocks” or engineers who excuse themselves with “premature optimization...”: they have that thing in common where they don’t know how it feels to wash a mountain of dirty dishes by hand, because the dishwasher cannot keep up.
A great solution to this was created by a firm called Fisher and Paykel who made a 2 drawer dishwasher designed to permanently house your crockery. While one drawer is washing, you fetch your stuff outa the other drawer.
https://www.fisherpaykel.com/uk/dishwashing/all-dishwashers/...
I have never understood people who place dirty dishes in dishwashers. You have to rinse first. Dishwasher essentially sanitize, rather than clean food off your plates.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This french company sells 'Bob', a miniature restaurant-like dishwasher: https://daan.tech/ch/discover-bob-mini-dishwasher/
“Robust, designed to last 10 years” Wow we are setting the goals low these days.
Slow dishwasher is a huge pain. When relatives visit and join dinner (and they do so often) I end up with more dishes than I can fit in the dishwasher. I can wash the remaining dishes the next morning, but this wastes energy and water because the dishwasher is not full. I can also "preventatively" turn on the dishes in the afternoon, to wash the breakfast and lunch dishes, so that it's completely empty for the dinner…
YMMV, but our Bosch dishwasher has 5 modes and one of them is "party" mode. When selected, the machine first preheats water for 30 minutes and then you can load it repeatedly, each load only takes 10 minutes to wash. It does have two drawbacks though. First, you have to use liquid detergent, as tablets do not dissolve fast enough. Second, it consumes a lot of power and water as opposed to the regular 3h+ setting. But…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A dishwasher buys the convenience of not doing the dishes. That frees your time in itself and in general the time it takes the dishwasher to run is not critical.
> in general the time it takes the dishwasher to run is not critical I have children. They use plates, bowls, cups, cutlery, more bowls, more plates, more cups. I have only limited room for additional dishes. Dishes better be done before dinner or else somebody is going to have bad time. And generally if someone in the family is having bad time then everybody is going to have bad time.
Of course but since there are several hours between meals, even if you have to run your dishwasher after each meal the time it takes to run is not critical as long as it's done within that timeframe.
Basically, in general it does not matter whether it takes 1 hour or 2 hours.
My dishwasher has a beeper for when it’s done like a microwave. It drives me up a wall!! I don’t care when dishes are done, I don’t need to attend to them urgently. They can sit there clean until I’m ready for them. There is no way to disable this beeper and it goes off every minute after the cycle is complete. Thank god the dishwasher has a wall switch to the circuit so I can just kill it but oh man. Never buying Bo…
As for microwaves.. the good old ones had a simple spring-driven timer, turn the wheel and when it hit zero it hit a bell, physically.. a single "pling". Perfect.
But the new one I bought as a replacement would beep five times, and keep beeping even if I opened the door. Crazy and totally useless. I want to have a.. word.. with industrial designers sometimes.
The microwave I have now also annoyingly beep five times, but at least it stops when I open the door.