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The Religion of Speed

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Re: The Religion of Speed

#141

Post by m463 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #87
m463 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember learning to race on the track. In the sharp turns, you feel like that's where you should try really hard to go fast. Because you're going so slow! But really, it makes more sense to slow down MORE, be smooth and controlled and get the turn right. And you'll get a better drive and be faster later. slow in, fast out. also, the math wins - going 1mph faster on the 1/4-mile straightaway works out better than g…

While I agree with the idea, the math is misleading. Going 1mph faster on the 100-foot turn may be faster overall than going 1mph faster on the 1/4-mile straightaway if the speed difference is large enough. Ex: - 1/4-mile at 100 mph takes 9s, at 101 mph, it will take 8.9s - 100 ft at 20 mph takes 3.8s, at 21 mph it will take 3.2s It means that overall, in this situation, it is better to go 1 mph more on the turn (8.9…

hmm... this is all my remembering old stuff. I thought there was better math when you go faster on the long parts vs trying to go faster on the short difficult parts?

better instead to use the short stuff to set up for better speeds on longer parts.

oh whatever.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#142

Post by rglover »

simianwords wrote: post #139
rglover wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the author. If you do go fast and don't deprive your customers of your product but the product breaks and doesn't deliver its intended value, is that a better tradeoff? Re: AI development, I'd say it's foolish to slow down research, but worthwhile for rollouts to the market. The time that should have been used for preparing people/businesses was wasted on fearmongering campaigns. Now we have a fire hose of slop t…

> If you do go fast and don't deprive your customers of your product but the product breaks and doesn't deliver its intended value, is that a better tradeoff? Its not a good tradeoff if it breaks it enough that people move off your product, I obviously concede that. Ultimately a firm should be incentivised to improve their long term profits after accounting for externalities to the world. Fast or slow is an implement…

> Its not clear that your subjective view of slop is reason enough for the world to slow down on AI rollout and I'm glad I don't live in a world that doesn't necessitate slowing down due to whims and fancies of a few people's subjective aesthetic takes.

This is a misunderstanding of what I'm talking about. It's not about "slop" in and of itself, it's about what reality that slop inevitably creates. There's a lot of focus on the output ("ermagherd you wrote this with AI"), but very little on the ripple effects/second-order effects (people spinning up cults, ending marriages, and gambling away their money [1]). That's not just cute "look at the freaks" stuff, that's a serious, civilizational-level problem 1-2 decades out.

You're right that my subjective opinion means dick-all beyond being that of an experienced, educated user of this stuff. But I'd at least hope that people take heed of what I'm saying and start to push back when it's objectively clear that decisions are closer on the spectrum to disaster than they are to benign mediocrity.

Thank you for sharing that link, this is exactly what I'd hope to see happening behind the scenes.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/26/ai-chat...

Re: The Religion of Speed

#144

Post by [deleted] »

Zxian wrote: post #118
TeMPOraL wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird analogy. Nonsensical from both physical standpoint (the only energy input when swinging is the person on the swing "pumping their legs"), and practical one (you usually sit down with the swing already at an angle and then kick off, so a good 50% of the arc/momentum is there from the setup ).

You clearly didn't read this. It's about rowing. Not being on a playground.

[deleted]

Re: The Religion of Speed

#145

Post by jeremyjh »

twister2920 wrote: post #134
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 you can't measure everything, and choosing what to measure is an editorial decision that introduces bias.

Bias is the whole point. Measures are taken to produce outcomes that someone has selected. Typically the person accountable for the results of their team or department. They have editorial authority.

The problem is that in software development, measures are rarely executed well. The things that are measurable are either not as important as things that are not objectively measurable, or they can be too easily gamed.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#146

Post by jeremyjh »

ppalata wrote: post #57
MobiusHorizons wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course! The article agrees with you > Real speed exists. Real speed is what happens when the work is understood, the constraints are clear, the people involved know what they’re doing, and the decisions have been made cleanly enough that execution can happen without constant re-litigation. I think the article is arguing against speed preventing the kind of planning and alignment that makes smooth delivery possible…

Depends on the organisation as I've seen the opposite (excessive planning without taking action) too. I'm on the speed side of things nowadays because I was usually wrong when I thought that the "work is understood and the constraints are clear".

Yes, the problem is the feedback loops often don't really exist in the planning stages. It is more difficult to gauge progress. There can be very detailed specifications or plans that won't survive their first contact with reality. This is why waterfall is over with.

Yet - not planning effectively is also a huge problem.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#147

Post by orionblastar »

el_io wrote: post #16
orionblastar wrote: post #3

We did a paper airplane test in 5th grade. We split into teams and made them like McDonnell Douglas, etc. First, we saw how many airplanes we could make and then how far they flew. Everyone was rushing to get the planes made, but I took my time and measured them to make sure every fold was done right. My planes flew the farthest, and our team won the government contract. The moral of the story was that haste makes wa…

Your team won government contract for paper planes?

It was a school experiment. The government doesn't want sloppy planes; they want them to be of high quality and fly far. The government was the teacher who decided who won.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#148

Post by jeremyjh »

prinny_ wrote: post #115

From an engineering perspective slow is smooth is fast, but from a sales perspective slow is smooth is slow. If you quote superior quality with 6 months later delivery your competitor will get to sign a contract that could very well last 5-10 years and comes up just so rarely. Missing out on that contract doesn't always mean you get to focus on other projects, it could mean you have to fire whole teams of people that…

Urgency can definitely be real, but you can't actually go faster by not planning. There are plenty of cases where just a few hours of planning could have made a huge difference, preventing weeks of thrashing and rework.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#149

Post by orionblastar »

tdrgabi wrote: post #30
orionblastar wrote: post #3

We did a paper airplane test in 5th grade. We split into teams and made them like McDonnell Douglas, etc. First, we saw how many airplanes we could make and then how far they flew. Everyone was rushing to get the planes made, but I took my time and measured them to make sure every fold was done right. My planes flew the farthest, and our team won the government contract. The moral of the story was that haste makes wa…

There are anecdotes supporting almost any point. We've all heard about the "make 100 clay pots", or, sometimes it's photos group vs "make 1 perfect clay pot" group.

Yeah, but I made more than 1 plane. You don't want planes that can't fly and crash because they were made sloppily and fast.

Re: The Religion of Speed

#150

Post by jeremyjh »

rglover wrote: post #102
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'm the author. Deadlines are artificial constraints (typically, some deadlines are unshakable—eg "we have to launch the payload when conditions are clear") that, imo, distract from the actual goal or task at hand. Sadly, a deadline is more often used as an excuse to rush, and not because the deadline itself is of material consequence (e.g., meeting a vendor's production deadline is unshakable). Instead, the more com…

Fedex Returns is just about the least competent product technology entity I've ever encountered and this migration was a garbage fire even by their low standards. I doubt if they could have gotten it right if they spent 10 years on it, and its entirely possible they did do that.
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