I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#1

Post by dodders » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code
read.acloud.guru

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#2

Post by grammarxcore » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

I'm not a fan of the title, which is rather clickbaity. The author addresses that in the article near the bottom.

> To be fair, I have absolutely no clue what the $86M figure includes — nor can I speak to the accuracy of my open source tool with no localized training vs. the pilot BlueNet system.

While I have no doubt that the author's solution is a cleaner approach more suited to real government than the cronyism probably involved in that 86M figure, sensationalizing the difference doesn't help FOSS government advocates. 57 lines of code also doesn't include the libraries involved, so I feel like this is just meant to grab attention. It's pretty rad, but the way it's presented doesn't lend itself to credibility and adoption.

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#3

Post by franciscop » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

Medium blog post from 2017, could we add the year to the title please?

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#4

Post by debarshri » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

Having worked for a traffic enforcement company. It is actually more than what meets the eye. ANPR and hardware is probably 5% of the actual infrastructure. Rest of it is generally a pipeline that most of time has to be retrofitted with their existing infrastructure. Lot of the cost into project management and aligning the spec understanding. So when someone says a project is worth $86 million it is not just the hardware and anpr but the whole pipeline integrated with various complicated government workflows, assuring SLO and various other guarantees

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#5

Post by Ididntdothis » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

I agree that a lot of projects are too expensive but this is a little silly. There is more to a public project besides nailing together a few lines of code. You need documentation, maintenance, user training and lot of other stuff. The actual tech is usually the easy part.

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#6

Post by concernedctzn » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

[2017] previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18681759

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#7

Post by dpcan » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

This is like saying I can replicate Google with:

SELECT * FROM websites WHERE title like '%dancing cats%';

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#8

Post by jkoudys » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

dpcan wrote: post #7

This is like saying I can replicate Google with: SELECT * FROM websites WHERE title like '%dancing cats%';

Dude you've replicated alta vista at best. I'm going to take my google to market and dominate:

    SELECT * FROM websites WHERE LOWER(title) LIKE '%dancing cats%';

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#9

Post by mrburton » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

This is the 4th time this post came up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18681759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21844164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20774985 (It was flagged here as a duplicate to 18681759)

Flagging it again.

Re: I replicated an $86M project in 57 lines of code

#10

Post by notacoward » Fri, Dec 20, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

jkoudys wrote: post #8

dpcan wrote: post #7

This is like saying I can replicate Google with: SELECT * FROM websites WHERE title like '%dancing cats%';

Dude you've replicated alta vista at best. I'm going to take my google to market and dominate: SELECT * FROM websites WHERE LOWER(title) LIKE '%dancing cats%';

SELECT * from ad_buyers WHERE LOWER(title) LIKE '%dancing cats%';