[HN Gopher] Fast (2019)
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Fast (2019)
Author : TheAlchemist
Score : 78 points
Date : 2022-03-31 21:14 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (patrickcollison.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (patrickcollison.com)
| sandstrom wrote:
| "JavaScript. Brendan Eich implemented the first prototype for
| JavaScript in 10 days"
|
| A good example of when fast is horrible. Developers have been
| paying the price for all the design flaws in JS ever since --
| billions of hours of extra work.
|
| (yes, it's hard to design something perfect in one iteration, but
| I think we can all agree that 10 days was rushed, Brendan has
| said so himself)
|
| Some of the other items on the list are really impressive though!
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It's only rushed if you think Brendan can see the future, and
| knows that there will be billions of hours of work done using
| the language he is creating.
|
| Apollo 8 had a ton of flaws in it as well. But for the most
| part it did the job that was intended for it. If the world
| decided to keep flying Apollo 8 for the next 30 years, I'm sure
| even more flaws would show up, but I wouldn't exactly blame the
| original designers.
| dgb23 wrote:
| > JavaScript. Brendan Eich implemented the first prototype for
| JavaScript in 10 days, in May 1995. It shipped in beta in
| September of that year.
|
| I have a bit of a love have relationship with this one. It was
| inspired by two languages, Self and Scheme, that are both
| incredibly beautiful, was then made ugly to be familiar and since
| then introduced major churn and bloat that was never needed.
|
| ---
|
| Imagine a world where HTML, CSS and JS were all just a unified
| language, with sound, simple primitives at the bottom,
| extensibility (macros, schema...) built-in, and a well designed
| standard library.
|
| Think of how much more productive developers would be, the
| possible performance optimizations in browser engines, much
| simpler tooling, less arbitrary choices, less hacks and
| workarounds. We would have more time to create useful and
| beautiful things than solve problems we imposed on us ourselves.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| Have there been any attempts to make such a language? I have a
| hard time visualizing what it would look like all merged
| together.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I think the closest I've ever seen is Dart's Flutter and
| Jetbrain's new Compose UI[0]
|
| [0]: https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-
| jb/blob/master/tutorial...
| pphysch wrote:
| I blame the various "Internet gold-rushes" for this. Dotcom
| bubble, Smartphone Globalization, SaaS Dark Ages (we are here).
|
| Too much money to be made to do things thoughtfully and
| sustainably.
| dimgl wrote:
| > SaaS Dark Ages (we are here).
|
| People actually feel this way? I find web development and
| entrepreneurship to be as accessible and as fun as ever. So
| many amazing technologies within reach. I really enjoy web
| development now more than ever.
| pphysch wrote:
| I think there is an obscene amount of intellectual &
| economic waste happening right now due to rent-seeking SaaS
| and draconian IP regulation, at least in the West.
|
| You know what would be really enjoyable? If there was a
| dominant culture of interoperability within hardware,
| social media and information-sharing. What "Web3" should
| have been about instead of appealing to / being co-opted by
| wealth-hoarding, destructive ideologies, and other crimes.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| > San Francisco proposed a new bus lane on Van Ness in 2001. Its
| opening was delayed to 2022, yielding a project duration of
| around 7,600 days. "The project has been delayed due to an
| increase of wet weather since the project started," said Paul
| Rose, a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
| spokesperson. The project will cost $310 million, i.e. $100,000
| per meter. The Alaska Highway, mentioned above, constructed
| across remote tundra, cost $793 per meter in 2019 dollars.
|
| A similar example - the Golden Gate Bridge was built in 4 years
| in the 1930s at a (inflation adjusted) cost of $500M, ahead of
| schedule and 10% under budget. A project to install suicide nets
| below the bridge started in 2008 and is still ongoing after
| multiple delays, with a total projected cost of $211M.
| planetsprite wrote:
| why does this happen? Our technology is magnitudes more
| advanced, we have better preexisting infrastructure, materials,
| measuring equipment, yet the nation with the world's most
| powerful economy doesn't hold a candle to it's past
| achievements.
| Liron wrote:
| I thought this was going to be about Stripe's investment in Fast
| Checkout
| lyime wrote:
| Me too
| clpm4j wrote:
| Same, but I'm so glad it wasn't.
|
| For those who haven't clicked the link: This is a really cool
| list of ambitious projects that were successfully delivered in
| relatively short amounts of time.
| mths wrote:
| Makes me wonder how many days Linus was pondering Git before he
| "started" working on it.
| DC-3 wrote:
| Good point. As anyone who has written an essay before can
| attest, if you have it all in your head before you start
| writing it can flow out from your fingers remarkably quickly.
| If you're still piecing it together as you go along it will
| typically take an order of magnitude longer.
| xxpor wrote:
| Related to the bottom: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
| [deleted]
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| Does anyone have evidence that Faddell's claim is genuine? I have
| no doubt the iPod "came together" that fast, but I recall reading
| about this and it seemed like the building blocks were in
| development for years prior.
| lordofmoria wrote:
| It's interesting how many of these happened during WWII. The fact
| that the Pentagon was built in under 500 days is astounding, if
| you've ever walked through the place.
|
| True urgency is really such a key predictor to things getting
| done impossibly fast, and our brains are great at detecting
| manufactured urgency.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I wonder how USA would fare in the face of a real war on the
| scale of WWII or bigger.
|
| For once, the government would need a real jolt, a voice of a
| leader, to send a spine chilling message down to every corner
| of the gov to stand up and get up. This seems impossible in the
| day of social media and the internet.
|
| Second, the financing machinery of the government would need to
| be completely replaced with something temporary the 1000x size
| of DARPA to get things going. Most people don't know but the
| marginal tax rate during WWII and well into 1970's was insanely
| high, at one point 91%. Reagan reduced marginal taxes from 70%
| to 28% by the end of his term.
|
| Laws would be slashed or dismantled. Bureaucracy would see the
| face of reality it has never seen.
|
| Then, the will of the people. Which I feel the most optimistic
| about. Humans are pretty good at getting together in a war like
| urgency. Counter point is COVID, but I can imagine every person
| to be onboard if a nuclear bomb was detonated in New York.
|
| It would be a strangely fascinating thing to witness, as much
| as I wish no war to ever happen.
| encoderer wrote:
| I think, like in the previous two world wars, it would likely
| take _years_ to achieve a real consensus here but, once
| achieved, we are up to it as a people.
| duped wrote:
| 35% of the country would cheer if a nuclear bomb went off in
| New York City.
|
| The real threat to the USA is ourselves, not something like
| WW3.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| > Then, the will of the people. Which I feel the most
| optimistic about. Humans are pretty good at getting together
| in a war like urgency. Counter point is COVID, but I can
| imagine every person to be onboard if a nuclear bomb was
| detonated in New York.
|
| You are way more optimistic than me. If WW3 breaks out
| government machinery, military, intelligence are all not
| going to be a problem at all. Before that though you'd have
| to align most of the country on what the right side even is.
| And yes, that includes the side that dropped a nuke on New
| York ("How do we know they did it? It may have been a false
| flag operation. Here's a Facebook video that proves it. They
| anyways deserved it for voting blue.")
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Approval ratings of Bush went up sharply after 9/11 [1].
| This is a fight or flight response analog of a nation. It
| is hard to predict but it would be pretty clear once
| casualties start piling up.
|
| The media would be under sorts of a martial law and things
| would shut down dramatically.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_George_W.
| _Bush...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The wonks at 538 seem to be of the opinion that the
| "Rally around the flag" effect is significantly dependent
| on the opposition party refraining from criticizing the
| leader(s) in question, at least in the medium-to-long
| term.
| paxys wrote:
| A lot has changed in the last 20 years. What would be the
| public reaction back then if Bush was making phone calls
| to Osama asking for dirt on his opponent in the 2004
| election?
| renw0rp wrote:
| What is needed to make energy transformation happen on such an
| impressive timeline rather than taking 30 more years?
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Fast_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848860 - Dec
| 2019 (291 comments)
|
| _Fast - Examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious
| things together_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21844301
| - Dec 2019 (2 comments)
|
| _Fast * Patrick Collison_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21355237 - Oct 2019 (3
| comments)
| syassami wrote:
| https://en.byd.com/news/how-an-electric-vehicle-company-beca...
|
| Add to the list pc.
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