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First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

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Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

#31

Post by mrweasel »

lukan wrote: post #21
readthenotes1 wrote: post #3

52.6B krone for 18 km 8B USD for 11 miles CACHSR IOS 36B USD for 171 miles. The Merced to Bakersfield IOS looks like a bargain on a distance basis. I have no idea of the carbon offset or passenger time saving versus flying of course

The building of this tunnel will likely create way more CO2, than can be saved by providing a more direct route and avoiding ferries (german source ... and very critical of the project) https://www.nabu.de/umwelt-und-ressourcen/verkehr/verkehrsin... Personally I like the concept of having a more direct access to scandinavia and see lots of other positive long term effects.

From a Danish perspective I don't really see any positive long, or short, term gains from the Fehmarn tunnel, but I also live in the wrong part of the country.

This is a tunnel for Sweden, Norway and Copenhagen, it's moving the center of everything in Denmark closer and closer to the center of Copenhagen, completely disconnecting the rest of the country. A few days ago a new train start running Copenhagen to Oslo, a seven hour trip. That's the same time it takes me to get to Copenhagen by train within Denmark. Everyone is happy that you can "Get on the train and just pop to Hamburg, Berlin or Prag", but you can't, only if you happen to live in a few select spots does that work. It's a multi-day journey with a layover within the country if I want to leave by rail.

Internationally this is a great project, internally in Denmark, it's going to make international train travel worse for the majority of the country.

Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

#34

Post by Towaway69 »

I wonder what the relationship is between the word engineering in the sense used here and software engineering?

I am amazed how bad software engineering has become with constant updates of software because of “improvements” or because there has to be constant release cycle else the software is unmaintained or bad.

While this kind of engineering is designed to be untouched for the next 15 to 30 years. Minimal maintenance is needed and certainly the concrete doesn’t need updating every second week because concrete has suddenly “improved” or there was a bug in it.

It’s become the norm to release bad software and fix it later, I hope this norm does not make it to real engineering.

Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

#35

Post by mmillin »

Towaway69 wrote: post #34

I wonder what the relationship is between the word engineering in the sense used here and software engineering ? I am amazed how bad software engineering has become with constant updates of software because of “improvements” or because there has to be constant release cycle else the software is unmaintained or bad. While this kind of engineering is designed to be untouched for the next 15 to 30 years. Minimal mainten…

Do you have a source for how little maintenance this will need? I imagine there will be teams of people continually employed for regular maintenance and operations. Concrete does develop “bugs” in the form of cracks, chips, or other damage that needs to be repaired.

While software engineering certainly deals with different constraints, I don’t think this is a fair comparison. When stakes are low (as they are for most software engineering), different precautions are appropriate. The aerospace or financial software engineering worlds might be more comparable here, and the engineering for those systems looks quite different as a result.

See also: https://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2026/programming_is_engineerin...

Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

#36

Post by t43562 »

Towaway69 wrote: post #34

I wonder what the relationship is between the word engineering in the sense used here and software engineering ? I am amazed how bad software engineering has become with constant updates of software because of “improvements” or because there has to be constant release cycle else the software is unmaintained or bad. While this kind of engineering is designed to be untouched for the next 15 to 30 years. Minimal mainten…

Software is super complex and cheap to update. Engineering like this, however difficult, is not that complex and it's very expensive and difficult to update.

We take advantage of the situation. If we invented some way of e.g. "growing" structures that turned out to be much cheaper we'd probably adapt our attitude to changing them.

Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

#37

Post by lukan »

t43562 wrote: post #36
Towaway69 wrote: post #34

I wonder what the relationship is between the word engineering in the sense used here and software engineering ? I am amazed how bad software engineering has become with constant updates of software because of “improvements” or because there has to be constant release cycle else the software is unmaintained or bad. While this kind of engineering is designed to be untouched for the next 15 to 30 years. Minimal mainten…

Software is super complex and cheap to update. Engineering like this, however difficult, is not that complex and it's very expensive and difficult to update. We take advantage of the situation. If we invented some way of e.g. "growing" structures that turned out to be much cheaper we'd probably adapt our attitude to changing them.

When you say Engineering is not that complex, have you taken into account corrosive sea water, pressure, currents, what it means to make repairs and maintainance down there etc? It is difficult, because it deals with a very complex world full of physics, chemistry and even biology in a way that does not allow errors.

Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

#38

Post by Towaway69 »

t43562 wrote: post #36
Towaway69 wrote: post #34

I wonder what the relationship is between the word engineering in the sense used here and software engineering ? I am amazed how bad software engineering has become with constant updates of software because of “improvements” or because there has to be constant release cycle else the software is unmaintained or bad. While this kind of engineering is designed to be untouched for the next 15 to 30 years. Minimal mainten…

Software is super complex and cheap to update. Engineering like this, however difficult, is not that complex and it's very expensive and difficult to update. We take advantage of the situation. If we invented some way of e.g. "growing" structures that turned out to be much cheaper we'd probably adapt our attitude to changing them.

Software isn't inherently complex, it becomes complex. Because it is iterative. Because we keep making demands of it that weren't planned.

Imagining building a bridge and then in the middle someone comes along and says it should also be a tunnel. I think therein lies a main difference to engineering and software engineering: planning and sticking to a plan.

Another thing are incentives: real engineering has real incentives to do it right, else you will get sued - by the families of those that died. Software engineering does not have this incentive to get it right.

Re: First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed

#40

Post by Towaway69 »

mmillin wrote: post #35
Towaway69 wrote: post #34

I wonder what the relationship is between the word engineering in the sense used here and software engineering ? I am amazed how bad software engineering has become with constant updates of software because of “improvements” or because there has to be constant release cycle else the software is unmaintained or bad. While this kind of engineering is designed to be untouched for the next 15 to 30 years. Minimal mainten…

Do you have a source for how little maintenance this will need? I imagine there will be teams of people continually employed for regular maintenance and operations. Concrete does develop “bugs” in the form of cracks, chips, or other damage that needs to be repaired. While software engineering certainly deals with different constraints, I don’t think this is a fair comparison. When stakes are low (as they are for most…

Definitely I am making a broad assumption with many specifies where one can say "but what about X,Y,Z". Certainly, there are buildings that fall down and bridges collapse but what is the trend? Is software engineering getting better or worse?

From the linked article:

> And I would say that the success of AI coding agents has proved once and for all that we had successfully built an engineering discipline so strong that we are also the first discipline that has been able to successfully run AI at large scale within our discipline.

Yet we have no real clue how AI works or how to debug it, it's a brute force solution to everyday problems. Daily there are new examples of AI "escaping" its enforced cage. Why? Why doesn't AI "just work"? Because we don't truly understand AI.

I think AI is exactly the opposite to "true" engineering where one understands the system and can reproduce it. After all, retraining the AI will probably give you a completely different AI even if the training data was the same.

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