Fast • Hacker News Board

Re: Fast

#141

Post by chongli » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:18 PM UTC

dtgriscom wrote: post #102

carabiner wrote: post #73

Major one missing: China built 5,000 miles of high speed rail in 6 years. In California, it's been 15 years and we have 0 miles complete. Also built numerous hospitals during pandemic in a couple weeks. Demolished and replaced a bridge in 43 hours: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a... . General pattern of completing infrastructure projects at a blistering pace - and they work. Also landed a…

> You just have to quash special interests sometime. Autocracy gets shit done. This is a classic "pros and cons" situation. I'm not sure the ability for the authorities to "get shit done" would balance the downsides, e.g.: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/07/05/...

There has to be a middle ground. The US did some amazing things without autocracy, such as the public works projects under the New Deal [1] [2] [3], the Marshall Plan [4] for helping to rebuild Europe, the Federal-Aid Highway Act [5] to build 41,000 miles of Interstate highways.

I don't know why things are so difficult now. There's got to be some detailed studies into this problem.

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Works_Administration

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...

Re: Fast

#142

Post by ftxbro » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:19 PM UTC

What if they add some fast ones that were fast but that didn't work out so great, like Theranos or the submarine guys. Also Apollo 8 is in there but I mean a relatively large percent of astronauts died compared to like your company's new agile plan how many agile blackbelts do you expect to literally decease because of shortcuts taken in the implementation of their workplace environment.

Re: Fast

#143

Post by nine_k » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:19 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #57

m463 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to knock the success of git, or the amazing effort under pressure, but the cohesiveness / understandability could be better.

That's a good point. But Git was initially written by one cranky Finn, in ten days. It totally changed the way we all work.

JavaScript was also famously built in 10 days.

I'd say that internally git is more consistent %)

Re: Fast

#144

Post by crop_rotation » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:19 PM UTC

khazhoux wrote: post #107

crop_rotation wrote: post #23

Having worked at a top 5 big tech company from college hire to a high level position, I have seen many factors that contribute to things being much slower than a startup. Some of them might be valid, but others are just the result of tragedy of large organisations (a big tech company is surprisingly similar to governments in terms of internal bureaucracy). * Large number of people and orgs willing and fighting to tak…

> Large number of people and orgs willing and fighting to take credit. If you need 1 week of support from an org, forget it unless you give them large credit worth a huge amount of work. This means you need to justify that credit via creating more work. I've worked at a couple of top 5 tech companies, and it saddens me that people have such a sour/cynical view. You're saying that people don't move unless they get cre…

Unfortunately this has been my observation seeing internal deal making, and it becomes stronger the more higher level discussions I see. To take a hypothetical example, let's say a team owns some very simple central config store, and every now and then someone needs to get an entry added there. The speed of getting it added would so strongly depend on the favour you can do for them. A matter of adding a new key in a json file can take from hours to weeks depending on who asks.

The idealists just lose out on promotions

Re: Fast

#145

Post by jljljl » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:20 PM UTC

temp_5089413 wrote: post #140

jljljl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a Grand Jury report analyzing the causes of the delay in the Van Ness project. While the unexpected conditions of the underground utilities is cited as the primary cause, it does touch on some project management aspects that you mention as opportunities for improvement: https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2020_2021/2021%20CGJ%20Repo... Ironically, more planning and analysis at the beginning of the project (e.g…

I worked on that report! (Throwaway because, well, my real name is on the second page...) The lack of meaningful technical planning was a big part of it, and so was the contract-awarding math, but I think the most striking - and generally applicable - behind-the-scenes stories were about what happens when trust breaks down at a human level. The city's internal back and forth on approving and then un-approving a subco…

Thank you for commenting! I didn't get those details in the first read of the report, but looking through now I can see what you mean.

It definitely does convey that once things were going wrong, the relationship broke down quickly, and it was hard to adapt once the trust was lost.

Re: Fast

#146

Post by nine_k » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:21 PM UTC

m463 wrote: post #56

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of things happened fast during WWII. One of the big reasons, was that regulatory hurdles were removed. The result: Long Island is one big Superfund site, and our cancer rates are through the roof . I know of at least six women, in my immediate orbit, that are currently being, or have recently been, treated for breast cancer. Before I moved here, thirty-two years ago, I had never met anyone that had cancer. Since…

Not to knock the success of git, or the amazing effort under pressure, but the cohesiveness / understandability could be better.

Most of the inconsistencies, like "checkout" having three different functions, were added much later, in attempts to make UX niftier locally, without thinking about the product as a whole.

Re: Fast

#147

Post by ftxbro » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:23 PM UTC

briangle wrote: post #116

This reminds me of when I interviewed at Stripe, a few years back. It was a surreal experience. We were in a small conference room. I sat at the table on one side, Patrick and Edwin sat on the other side. They asked me questions, I answered them. It was a good discussion. Then there was a brief pause in the conversation. Suddenly, Patrick let off the most absurdly loud fart. I chuckled in surprise. Patrick and Edwin…

> "I still wonder if Patrick's fart was a deliberate and calculated"

I mean if it was planned then that's some impressive intestinal agency. But maybe with his diet he always got it chambered at that time of day so he can plan around it.

Re: Fast

#148

Post by porphyra » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:23 PM UTC

seti0Cha wrote: post #36

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…

I can't comment on the bus line example, but the New York Times had a great write-up ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... ) about subway building in New York. At least in New York there's a lot more going on than the reasons you point out. Particularly damning is the fact that Paris is successfully building subways at a 10th of the cost in far less time despite having even more constraint…

The recent additions to the Rome Metro were also built faster and cheaper compared to, say, the Central Subway in San Francisco, despite all the archaeological artifacts in Rome slowing down the digging.

Re: Fast

#149

Post by terribleperson » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:24 PM UTC

cornfutes wrote: post #41

chrisco255 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we were using Java Applets or Flash ActionScript or Silverlight, all our problems would be solved.

Actually, Runescape one of the most successful MMOs ever was a Java applet. Java is much more effective at complex object-oriented modeling and an MMO is a canonical example of where OOP not only shines but is necessary. Before ES6, there were half a dozen styles of approximating classes in JavaScript, the main one being with closure-returning-functions. Even utilizing these clever tricks to make JavaScript a decent…

Runescape was crazy for the time (pre-WoW). A full-featured MMO you could play on a wide variety of computers without downloading or installing anything. All you needed was Java.

Re: Fast

#150

Post by danudey » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 10:25 PM UTC

norir wrote: post #11

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…

Wow, I did not know that story but it makes so much sense that the ipod was an almost inevitable development from the mini hdd. Goes to show how important it is to have people who can see the big picture and find the right people to execute.

It's worth noting that hard-drive based MP3 players did exist at the time, but they had several drawbacks that Apple found solutions for.

First, they used physically larger 2.5" hard drives, making them larger and heavier. The small 1.8" HDD that the iPod used allowed it to be the size of a deck of cards, meaning it was much more portable.

Secondly, hard drives consume a large amount of power to operate, so HDD-based players had terrible battery life because it was always spinning up the disk to get the next song. The iPod solved this by just adding 32 MB of RAM as a cache, so when you started an album the system would just read in the next 15 minutes (or so? that's about 30 MB at 160 kbit) of songs and then power down the HDD until the cache was running out or the user changed albums/playlists/tracks.

It was also fast; using firewire to transfer songs restricted it to Mac users at first, but it meant that you could rip a new CD and put it on your iPod in a short amount of time, or, later, buy an album on iTunes and have it ready for your jog in ten minutes.

It's funny to think how many people saw the iPod as an obvious immediate failure. As the infamous Slashdot post[0] said, "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

[0] https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...