[HN Gopher] Big Problems
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Big Problems
Author : memorable
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-10-01 01:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thoughtfulatlas.bearblog.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (thoughtfulatlas.bearblog.dev)
| chubot wrote:
| The opening quote is probably from Richard Hamming, not Richard
| Feyman:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2301089 (found through
| Google)
|
| https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
|
| Although maybe they knew each other and both gave the same advice
| ...
|
| Actually that 2011 HN thread links to this paper, which
| attributes the same sentiment to Feynman, without an exact quote:
|
| https://people.tamu.edu/~huafei-yan//Rota/tenlesses.pdf
| krschultz wrote:
| For many years my "big question" has been "why do software
| engineering projects fail at a disproportionally higher rate than
| other engineering fields?"
|
| Though I have to say the other engineering fields are not doing
| so hot lately either, so I might have the wrong question.
| mynegation wrote:
| After 20+ years in the field: main reason is unclear
| requirements. Software malleability is taken for granted so
| much that the under specification and fluidity of requirements
| became a norm and canonicalized in "agile". That's not
| necessarily a bad thing, it does allow for quick advancement of
| what is possible but high failure rate is the price we pay.
| Second: unlike traditional engineering, there are not too many
| university or college programs that take rigorous approach to
| building software at scale. Till today, software is a free-for-
| all industry. That allowed us to grow very fast, but - again -
| high failure rate is the price we pay. Third - lack of formal
| standards and by that I mean not just APIs or protocol specs
| but formal requirements on things like performance, fault-
| tolerance, lifespan etc.
| amelius wrote:
| Also, bugs in software are seen as a fact of life. You can't
| get warranty on software (at least this holds in practice for
| most consumers). If MacOS deletes all your files, good luck
| proving that it wasn't your fault, and good luck suing Apple.
|
| So this gives programmers a carte blanche to create crap,
| effectively.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Auto companies do big recalls as well. They just have to
| pay more to fix a bug so there's more effort in front
| loading QA
| bombcar wrote:
| Many many engineering problems are basically "build a copy of
| that thing over there, but build it here". Software is often
| vastly different each time.
| krschultz wrote:
| How many software engineering projects are CRUD apps or yet
| another ETL pipeline?
| fragmede wrote:
| That's a very broad big question. Like, do they really fail
| more? What's the numerator and denominator? There are are tons
| of high-profile failures, but there are innumerable successes
| as well. Do you count pushing the 100 or so versions of Chrome
| that have been pushed out, across millions of devices as one
| success, or a billion? How do you count projects that don't
| work right at launch, but do end up working okay after a couple
| versions?
| baxtr wrote:
| _> You have to keep a dozen of your favourite problems constantly
| present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a
| dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or result,
| test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it
| helps._
|
| Reminds me of similar patterns elsewhere. People keep "tabs" open
| on specific topics and add information over time.
|
| - Mathematician Serge Lang kept correspondence and related
| documentation in extensive "files"
|
| - Tony Fadell says you should keep coming back to ideas that you
| can't stop thinking about and add more insights over time
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I like the paper idea - that paper and ink becomes an extension
| of our bodily selves (probably more priopeeception than some
| spiritual thing).
|
| I mean I can remember and riff off a great paragraph in physical
| book, where the book is on the shelf, which page the writing is
| on, did I write next to it? But doing something like that on this
| iPhone - forget it, it is not "there" in any useful sense
| informal007 wrote:
| anonymous344 wrote:
| my big question is: what frequency (or should I say spectrum) is
| smell.
|
| and more new from one man's prophecy that said that whole cities
| will get their energy from a device as small as matchbox... how
| can that huge energy come out even because ou need thick wires..
| mistermann wrote:
| Maybe it is a different form of energy, for example the kind
| referenced in "Gosh, I feel incredibly energetic today!"?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| The qualia of smell are our subjective experience of chemical
| space
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_space
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