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patrickcollison.com

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Re: Fast

#91

Post by fragmede »

anonymousiam wrote: post #53

This may be one of the best (worst) examples of how bad things are today. The California High-Speed Rail was funded over 15 years ago and they haven't begun building it yet. They are 82% of the way through their environmental studies. https://hsr.ca.gov/about/capital-costs-funding/ https://twitter.com/cahsra/status/1674900759677227012

It may delight you to know, then, that they've started building, and in fact they've built a bunch of stuff for it already! As of March 2023, 50 miles of guideway are complete, 39 are underway; 41 structures are complete, and 29 are underway¹. Some of the completed structures include:

- The Cedar Viaduct, a 3,700-foot-long bridge over State Route 99 in Fresno, which features a signature double arch design².

- The Hanford Viaduct, a 3,300-foot-long bridge over the Kings River and State Route 43 in Kings County, which is the longest structure in Construction Package 2-3²⁴.

- The San Joaquin River Viaduct, a 4,700-foot-long bridge over the San Joaquin River and North Avenue in Fresno County, which includes a pergola structure to allow future trains to cross over the existing BNSF Railway tracks²³.

- The Tuolumne Street Bridge, a two-way bridge that spans the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and future high-speed rail tracks in downtown Fresno²³.

- The Fresno Trench and State Route 180 Passageway, a two-mile-long trench that will carry high-speed trains under several streets in Fresno, including State Route 180²³.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_California_Hig....

[2] https://hsr.ca.gov/about/project-update-reports/2023-project....

[3] https://hsr.ca.gov/2023/05/11/video-release-high-speed-rail-....

[4] https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/high-speed-rail/article...

Re: Fast

#92

Post by crazygringo »

gizmo wrote: post #18
entrepy123 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive for sure, not to knock it. But, as I recall reading, the mini HDD for the iPod was already developed by a vendor's R&D, sitting around for a use case. Which Apple decided to take exclusive advantage of. Thus, that iPod offering seemed kind of "revolutionary". But it's not like Apple started the project, then developed all of the tech for it in this time of 290 days. Which is sort of what the summary reads…

They had to design the software, the UX including the touch wheel, the mac integration and syncing, and everything relating to the design, materials, and sourcing of the components. It’s astonishing that they got it done in less than a year. (And I highly recommend Fadell’s book)

Everything around the software would have been quick -- both the iPod UX and syncing were extremely simple back then. The iPod didn't really have a GUI, it was just six lines of text and a header line.

It's the manufacturing speed that astonishes me -- the sourcing as you say, the supply chains and the factory capacity. I'm also very curious about the manufacture of the scroll wheel -- was that something really new that had to be figured out (it seemed/felt like it) or was it a trivial combination of existing components?

Re: Fast

#93

Post by nitwit005 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #27
lemming wrote: post #15

> Brendan Eich implemented the first prototype for JavaScript in 10 days, in May 1995. And 28 years later, the world is still investing untold millions of dollars, and untold person-years of effort, working around it.

28 years later the web is a thriving platform responsible for trillions of dollars of economic activity, of which JS is a core component.

Sure, but they could have made something very different, and that would still be true. People just have no choice but to use JS.

Plenty chose Flash, Java, and friends when there were other options.

Re: Fast

#94

Post by ireadmevs »

dmix wrote: post #64
fragmede wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats the story, but everyone who transited Van Ness during that time saw the same thing - very little work actually being done. The equipment just sat there idle most of the time. A more efficient process could have come in and finished the work, block by block in far less time if they actually, y'know, worked on it. People in construction tell me that it's because they're always waiting on the other guy to finish t…

What are you going have consequences in the project management office of a gov contractor that probably has no real competition, besides maybe multiple years later when it's politically convenient? Fire the lower level union workers slacking off? The fact every single major infrastructure project is a decade late and 3x over budget is just normal and tolerated by the people running the show across the US/Canada. The…

> It's only natural human behaviour to not put effort in if there's no consequences or risk in doing so.

That’s nonsense. That’s like saying that it’s only natural human behavior to abuse and be abused. If I put myself in the shoes of an underpaid sewage worker, that has a family to maintain, that sees the owner and investors of said private companies getting obscenely rich just by closings contracts under their AC… yeah, I’d slack the s* out of it too.

Re: Fast

#95

Post by nitwit005 »

thecopy wrote: post #34
soggybutter wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern JS is a passable language only after a tremendous amount of time and effort was invested to retrofit it as such. For all of the purported isomorphic benefits, I still don't know why anyone would choose to use it outside of being forced to in browsers

I don't really mind that "a tremendous amount of time and effort was invested" into JS. It works great for me and my team and we are hugely productive using it. That why. It works and we deliver a lot of value.

You don't mind, because someone else spent the money. The people signing the checks probably did care.

Re: Fast

#96

Post by xeonmc »

londons_explore wrote: post #62
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a big tech company is surprisingly similar to governments in terms of internal bureaucracy Underrated point. It didn't really sink in for me until I saw the numbers with my own eyes. From a quick DDG search of publicly available info, here's [1] the numbers for FAANG headcount as of the end of 2022: - Meta: 86,000 - Apple: 164,000 - Amazon: 1,541,000 - Netflix: 12,800 - Google: 190,000 The numbers get a bit smaller…

Google released its search engine when it was just 2 guys. If those two guys kept working on it for the past 25 years, but hired nobody new, I wonder what their product would look like? I suspect it would still be pretty decent.

It would be like Dwarf Fortress

Re: Fast

#97

Post by danem »

jljljl wrote: post #24

For the Van Ness Bus Line example: one reason there were major delays was because maps of underground sewer lines and plumbing were inaccurate, and needed to be relocated. The 6 years of construction was really a bus lane + major sewer infrastructure project. Which brings up another reason why some of these projects were Fast -- they operated in places where there there wasn't existing infrastructure or residents to…

For anyone looking for an in-depth post mortem of the Van Ness bus line, please read the report from the SF Civil Grand Jury here: https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2020_2021/2021%20CGJ%20Repo...

Re: Fast

#98

Post by gowld »

anonymousiam wrote: post #53

This may be one of the best (worst) examples of how bad things are today. The California High-Speed Rail was funded over 15 years ago and they haven't begun building it yet. They are 82% of the way through their environmental studies. https://hsr.ca.gov/about/capital-costs-funding/ https://twitter.com/cahsra/status/1674900759677227012

Initial funding was 15 years ago. Construction funds weren't approved until 2013 when construction contracts started to be awarded. Construction began in 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-Spe...

https://hsr.ca.gov/about/project-update-reports/2023-project...

"Progress continues across the 171 miles under construction and development in the Central Valley, including more than 30 active construction sites and 69 structures or grade separation projects either underway or completed."

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