[HN Gopher] On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)
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On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)
Author : rramadass
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-07-14 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (larch-www.lcs.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (larch-www.lcs.mit.edu)
| rramadass wrote:
| Pdf of the lecture here :
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/114669.114686
|
| Note the six points mentioned in the final "Conclusions" section;
|
| _First it is important to emphasize the value of simplicity and
| elegance, for complexity has a way of compounding difficulties
| and as we have seen, creating mistakes. My definition of elegance
| is the achievement of a given functionality with a minimum of
| mechanism and a maximum of clarity.
|
| Second, the value of metaphors should not be underestimated.
| Metaphors have the virtue that they have an expected behavior
| that is understood by all. Unnecessary communication and
| misunderstandings are reduced. Learning and education are
| quicker. In effect metaphors are a way of internalizing and
| abstracting concepts such that one's thinking can be on a higher
| plane and low-level mistakes are avoided.
|
| Third, use of constrained languages for design or synthesis is a
| powerful methodology. By not allowing a programmer or designer to
| express irrelevant ideas, the domain of possible errors becomes
| far more limited.
|
| Fourth, one must try to anticipate both errors of human usage and
| of hardware failure and properly develop the necessary
| contingency paths. This process of playing "what if" is not as
| easy as it may sound since implicit is the need to attach
| likelihoods of occurrence to events and to address issues of the
| independence of failures.
|
| Fifth, it should be assumed in the design of a system, that it
| will have to be repaired or modified. The overall effect will be
| a much more robust system, where there is a high degree of
| functional modularity and structure, and repairs can be made
| easily.
|
| Sixth, and lastly, on a large project, one of the best
| investments that can be made is the cross-education of the team
| so that nearly everyone knows more than he or she needs to know.
| Clearly with educational redundancy, the team is more resilient
| to unexpected tragedies or departures. But in addition, the
| increased awareness of team members can help catch global or
| systemic mistakes early. It really is a case of "more heads are
| better than one."_
| 7thaccount wrote:
| A lot of these are good, but not sure how easy it is to do
| anymore with Jack Welch style management everywhere (thinking
| about #6 in particular). In my experience management sees the
| bench strength fading and becoming nothing, but then will do
| nothing to fix even if the wider industry is fading.
| detourdog wrote:
| I think your point would be filed using the third rule. Jack
| Welch style management concerns might ought to be considered
| irrelevant.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| What's Jack Welch management style in your eyes?
|
| I know only a little about his history at GE. And I don't
| have any reason to defend the guy, just curious what the view
| is these days.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Extreme focus on the stock price and thus highly short term
| thinking. The accountants run the show and try to
| aggressively cut costs at every corner which works really
| well in the short term, but over time the company gets
| decimated and nobody can take the bigger product risks that
| allow a company to continue to evolve.
| vmh1928 wrote:
| From the title I was expecting a discussion of physical building
| subsystems, like HVAC and elevators.
| interpunct wrote:
| I hear you, since I spend half my free time fixing stuff that
| breaks on my house and its contents.
| interpunct wrote:
| "I regret that I have but one upvote to give to my fellow HN
| netizen."
| detourdog wrote:
| I think the same principles apply. I would argue the second
| point that value's metaphors allows. Demonstrates how malleable
| the technique is.
| rickydroll wrote:
| Are not wrong about MA rotaries. The Concord rotary on Rt 2 was
| exciting before they rebuilt it. The junction of 2a into the
| rotary still is exciting.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Ha, I've hit a that rotary exactly once about 20 years ago and
| I remember it was a bit of a sight.
| pgraf wrote:
| One quote that I find funny from today's point of view:
|
| _As we approach the present, corresponding to a personal
| computer, the graph really should become more complicated since
| one consequence of computers becoming super-cheap is that
| increasingly, they are being embedded in other equipment. The
| modern automobile is but one example. And it remains to be seen
| how general-purpose the current wave of palm-sized computers will
| be with their stylus inputs._
| contingencies wrote:
| Some nice pearls of wisdom in here.
|
| Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
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