Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Religion of Speed

graybeard.ing

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 166 posts

Re: The Religion of Speed

#91

Post by aswegs8 »

phtrivier wrote: post #84

Impossible to disagree with the author, and yet something seems missing in the discussion... Let me check: Ctrl-F, 'deadline' 0 result. Oh, yeah, that's what missing from the discussion. And without any trolling, I'm curious about what the author would have to say about this matter. Not all "need for speed" comes from a vacuum. Is it always legit ? Should we push back ? Sure. Do we always meaningfully, practically, r…

I think the author is having a kind of idealistic, relaxed view of work. Moving quickly, even if you break things, has a clear advantage over being perfectionistic, waiting to get feedback, building things that are not needed.

These are obvious lessons of agile management. Even if they are not absolute, maybe that post is meant as some kind of relative statement, in general, speed is a good thing. More speed than you are comfortable with.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#92

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #22

"The better work is usually calmer than people expect. It still moves[...] It does not worship motion for its own sake." There's two architects, Reiser and Umemoto who wrote a book called The Atlas of Novel Tectonics about maybe 20 years ago and a sentence that always stuck with me was "in a moving world the nomad is the one standing still". The whole cult of speed irony, like digital nomads who only ever seem to cam…

[deleted]

Re: The Religion of Speed

#93

Post by andai »

austin-cheney wrote: post #81

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. My learnings about speed: * people tend to not measure things and when they actually do bother they tend to measure the wrong things, the things of immediate comfort * measurements, when executed correctly, are objective with numeric evidence, thus some people are wholly incapable of measuring things for the same reasons some people cannot introspect * people tend to guess at measures…

>Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing... Recall the pure joy of riding on a backyard swing: an easy cycle of motion, the momentum coming from the swing itself. The swing carries us; we do not force it. We pump our legs to drive our arc higher, but gravity does most of the work. We are not so much swinging as being swung. The boat swings you. The shell wants to move fast: Speed sings in its lines and nature.

Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. Social climbers strive to be aristocrats but their efforts prove them no such thing. Aristocrats do not strive; they have already arrived. Swing is a state of arrival.

—Houghton Mifflin, Mind Over Water

Re: The Religion of Speed

#94

Post by austin-cheney »

jstanley wrote: post #90
austin-cheney wrote: post #81

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. My learnings about speed: * people tend to not measure things and when they actually do bother they tend to measure the wrong things, the things of immediate comfort * measurements, when executed correctly, are objective with numeric evidence, thus some people are wholly incapable of measuring things for the same reasons some people cannot introspect * people tend to guess at measures…

> * measurements, when executed correctly, are objective with numeric evidence, thus some people are wholly incapable of measuring things for the same reasons some people cannot introspect I don't understand what you're trying to say. What are the reasons some people can't introspect? Is it even true that some people can't introspect?

There are many reasons. Some are ethical like conflicts of interest or bias. Some are financial like insufficient time or missing tools. Most commonly the cause is personality and sometimes it’s types of neuro-divergence.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#96

Post by jcelerier »

latexr wrote: post #88
phtrivier wrote: post #84

Impossible to disagree with the author, and yet something seems missing in the discussion... Let me check: Ctrl-F, 'deadline' 0 result. Oh, yeah, that's what missing from the discussion. And without any trolling, I'm curious about what the author would have to say about this matter. Not all "need for speed" comes from a vacuum. Is it always legit ? Should we push back ? Sure. Do we always meaningfully, practically, r…

Most deadlines are artificial and self-inflicted. The author is not advocating that if you have a literal fire consuming half your home that you should sit down on the floor, ponder your possibilities, schedule a few calls for discussion, then send a few messages on Slack to decide what to do; of course some things are more urgent than others. The author is calling out a “speed cult”; they’re not making an absolutist…

> Most deadlines are artificial and self-inflicted.

most software in the world is built by consulting companies for external customers and under their customer's deadline, thus not self-inflicted

Re: The Religion of Speed

#97

Post by dgellow »

simianwords wrote: post #44
dgellow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see the problem with the technology not being available widely for way longer as it improves. If you think the current situation is a good one you’re not paying attention to how ridiculous the spending has been on the AI bet. What exists now is not sustainable at all, and is already the cause of a massive worldwide inflation. And so far no proof of improving companies ROI. The AI push is going to damage our s…

Why do you think the spending is ridiculous? Do you not agree that we've had a step improvement in coding, mathematics, search/retrieval?

It's irrelevant... The spending commitment OpenAI has for 2030 is larger than the projected AI infra market in 2030. And we still haven't seen a proof that agents contribute positively to consumers ROI. It's a capital misallocation problem, a number problem, that has nothing to do with subjective feelings regarding LLMs

Re: The Religion of Speed

#99

Post by dolni »

aswegs8 wrote: post #91
phtrivier wrote: post #84

Impossible to disagree with the author, and yet something seems missing in the discussion... Let me check: Ctrl-F, 'deadline' 0 result. Oh, yeah, that's what missing from the discussion. And without any trolling, I'm curious about what the author would have to say about this matter. Not all "need for speed" comes from a vacuum. Is it always legit ? Should we push back ? Sure. Do we always meaningfully, practically, r…

I think the author is having a kind of idealistic, relaxed view of work. Moving quickly, even if you break things, has a clear advantage over being perfectionistic, waiting to get feedback, building things that are not needed. These are obvious lessons of agile management. Even if they are not absolute, maybe that post is meant as some kind of relative statement, in general, speed is a good thing. More speed than you…

> Moving quickly, even if you break things, has a clear advantage over being perfectionistic, waiting to get feedback, building things that are not needed.

The entire point of slowing down is so you don't do this. Understand the problem well first, so you don't waste time building something that was never viable in the first place.

The author isn't advocating for perfect. You have to understand the problem well enough to know what all of the critical assumptions are. Some assumptions will derail an entire project if you get them wrong. Others will be a minor inconvenience, at worst.

In software, having a solid handle on future architecture means you can speak to how unanticipated new features fit in. You know what parts you can skip for now, and have it not be a big deal.

I've started to wonder if many of the people obsessed with speed lack capability. If you can't build something well, you can try building something poor quickly. This certainly applies to my current employer.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#100

Post by simianwords »

dgellow wrote: post #97
simianwords wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the spending is ridiculous? Do you not agree that we've had a step improvement in coding, mathematics, search/retrieval?

It's irrelevant... The spending commitment OpenAI has for 2030 is larger than the projected AI infra market in 2030. And we still haven't seen a proof that agents contribute positively to consumers ROI. It's a capital misallocation problem, a number problem, that has nothing to do with subjective feelings regarding LLMs

In that case, if the numbers do work out and labs make shit load of money, would you agree you were mistaken?
Post reply on HN