[HN Gopher] Code is run more than read (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
Code is run more than read (2023)
Author : facundo_olano
Score : 111 points
Date : 2026-04-10 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (olano.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (olano.dev)
| choeger wrote:
| Clearly, there is a thing missing here: Regulations. If you have
| strong regulations on how you can make money, you cannot
| sustainably have biz antagonize user. So in that case biz just
| becomes a filter for users that actually are willing (and able)
| to fund your software. That's a good thing.
|
| Obviously, our regulations aren't perfect or even good enough
| yet. See DRM. See spyware TVs. See "who actually gets to control
| your device?". But still...
| codemog wrote:
| Stupid regulations are why we have an idiotic cookie banner on
| many websites.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Regulations. If you have strong regulations on how you can
| make money, you cannot sustainably have biz antagonize user.
|
| If that's what the regulators are optimizing for.
| 3form wrote:
| I like the final conclusion. And sadly I don't feel like anything
| changed for the better on this topic since 2023.
|
| I am afraid that without a major crash or revolution of some
| sort, user won't matter next to a sufficiently big biz. But time
| will tell.
| dbalatero wrote:
| I've found the users-first mentality degrading over the years
| at companies. It's a bit jarring too, since a lot of my early
| training was pretty user-centric.
| 3form wrote:
| I do have a feeling that the example of bigger players is
| carefully followed by many of the other companies, kind of as
| a cult of success. And that example for a long time has been
| rather lacking.
| pydry wrote:
| This is definitely true. In growth companies there is way
| more emphasis these days on investor hype over user
| centricity.
|
| For companies that have a solid competitive moat they have at
| best gotten lazy about user centricity and at worst actively
| hostile.
| alexpotato wrote:
| I've worked at some of the "top tier" finance firms over the
| years.
|
| It is absolutely astounding how much of them run on code that is:
|
| - very reliable aka it almost never breaks/fails
|
| - written in ways that makes you wonder what series of events led
| to such awful code
|
| For example:
|
| - A deployment system that used python to read and respond to raw
| HTTP requests. If you triggered a deployment, you had to leave
| the webpage open as the deployment code was in the HTTP serving
| code
|
| - A workflow manager that had <1000 lines of code but commits
| from 38 different people as the ownership always got passed to
| whoever the newest, most junior person on the team was
|
| - Python code written in Java OOP style where every function call
| had to be traced up and down through four levels of abstraction
|
| I mention this only b/c the "LLMs write shitty code" isn't quite
| the insult/blocker that people think it is. Humans write TONS of
| awful but working code too.
| majorbugger wrote:
| Which is great until you have to make changes to this kind of
| code, not to mention a massive refactoring.
| arscan wrote:
| It is completely possible that the path that got them to this
| point was the optimal path given their goals and knowledge at
| the time. And wildly enough, maybe it was even the optimal
| path with perfect knowledge of the future as well.
| esafak wrote:
| That's the opposite of 'great'. Good code is that which can
| be refactored.
| JackSlateur wrote:
| I would not call "you must leave the webpage open" a "working
| code" :)
|
| This looks like an example of biobackend: defective IT
| compensated by humans
|
| Your point is very sane, of course, shitty code was not
| invented now. But was it ever sold as a revolution ? Probably,
| too !
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| Google "hospital server room". Guess everywhere should just do
| the same thing with their server rooms, yeah? Works for
| hospitals, and look how much money the healthcare system makes!
| Why even pay an IT engineer, just plug in another wire bro.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is getting to be possibly the most irritating thing I've
| seen on Hacker News since registering here. Every thread about
| a limitation of LLMs being immediately rebuked with "humans do
| that too."
|
| It's a continuous object lesson in missing the point. A similar
| thing happened a few hours ago when an article was posted about
| a researcher who posted a fake paper about a fake disease to a
| pre-print server that LLMs picked up via RAG, telling people
| with vague symptoms that they had this non-existent disease. Lo
| and behold, commenters go in immediately saying "I'd be fooled
| too because I trust pre-print medical research." Except the
| article itself was intentionally ridiculous, opening by telling
| you it was fake, using obviously fake names, fictional
| characters from popular television. The only reason it fooled
| humans on Hacker News is because they don't bother reading the
| articles and respond only to headlines.
|
| It's just like your code examples. Humans fail because we're
| lazy. Just like all animals, we have a strong instinct to
| preserve energy and expend effort only when provoked by fear,
| desire, or external coercion. The easiest possible code to
| write that seems to work on a single happy path using stupid
| workarounds is deemed good enough and allowed through. If your
| true purpose on a web discussion board is to bloviate and prove
| how smart you are rather than learn anything, why bother
| actually reading anything? The faster you comment, the better
| chance you have of getting noticed and upvoted anyway.
|
| Humans are not actually stupid. We _can_ write great code. We
| _can_ read an obviously fake paper and understand that it 's
| fake. We know how hierarchy of evidence and trust works if we
| bother to try. We're just incredibly lazy. LLMs are not lazy.
| Unlike animals, they have no idea how much energy they're using
| and don't care. Their human slaves will move heaven and earth
| and reallocate entire sectors of their national economies and
| land use policies to feed them as much as they will ever need.
| LLMs, however, do have far more concrete cognitive limitations
| brought about by the way they are trained without any grounding
| in hierarchy of evidence or the factual accuracy of the text
| the ingest. We've erected quite a bit of ingenious scaffolding
| with various forms of augmented context, input pre-processing,
| post-training model fine tuning, and whatever the heck else
| these brilliant _human_ engineers are doing to create the
| latest generation of state of the art agents, but the models
| underneath still have this limitation.
|
| Do we need more? Can the scaffolding alone compensate
| sufficiently to produce true genius at the level of a human who
| is actually motivated and trying? I have no idea. Maybe, maybe
| not, but it's really irritating that we can't even discuss the
| topic because it immediately drops into the tarpit of "well,
| you too." It's the discourse of toddlers. Can't we do better
| than this?
| demorro wrote:
| Bravo.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > LLMs write shitty code
|
| LLMs _regurgitate_ shitty code. They learned it entirely from
| people.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Python code written in Java OOP style where every function
| call had to be traced up and down through four levels of
| abstraction
|
| To be fair, the _standard library_ `unittest` and `logging`,
| along with the historic `distutils` /Setuptools stack, are
| hardly any better.
| jollyllama wrote:
| And cars are driven more than worked on, but putting the oil
| filter inaccessibly in the middle of the engine block is still an
| unforgiveable sin.
| wiseowise wrote:
| But if you happen to own a repair shop, you can make a fortune
| from drivers who don't know how to do it. Wink.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| Repair shop owners also don't enjoy work which is
| unnecessarily difficult.
|
| Between rebuilding an engine and disassembling a bumper to
| replace a lightbulb most mechanics would genuinely rather be
| doing the lengthy but interesting work of rebuilding an
| engine than the lengthy and fucking boring task of
| disassembling a bumper to fix a lightbulb.
|
| Moreover, even if a mechanic must charge you stupid amounts
| of labour cost to do a simple repair because it genuinely
| takes that much time, the customer might not come away with
| it thinking: "fuck, I bought a dumb car which is expensive to
| repair", they might instead come away with it thinking: "all
| these mechanics, quoting ridiculous prices to fix a light
| bulb, they must all be scammers".
| a4isms wrote:
| _Between rebuilding an engine and disassembling a bumper to
| replace a lightbulb most mechanics would genuinely rather
| be doing the lengthy but interesting work of rebuilding an
| engine than the lengthy and fucking boring task of
| disassembling a bumper to fix a lightbulb._
|
| ChatGPT, write me a 2010-style Hacker News front page essay
| about how software maintenance is just like automobile
| maintenance, and why nobody wants low-value maintenance
| work to be arduous, failure-prone, and boring.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Here:
| https://chatgpt.com/s/t_69d96c050078819199750da28ebd2526
|
| I gagged after 2 sentences.
| its_ethan wrote:
| What if there's an efficiency in engine design by placing the
| filter in the middle that leads to a +2mpg improvement for the
| driver? Or that it fails, on average, 22k miles later into it's
| life? Not all hard-to-repair-yourself designs are malicious...
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Except..there is never such reason. They can put the filter
| anywhere in the pipeline. Some even have it exactly where it
| should be: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/2013+Subaru+Legacy+Oi
| l+and+Oil+...
| csours wrote:
| If it is a part with a regular maintenance schedule, it
| should be designed for maintainability.
|
| Most maintainability conflicts come from packaging and design
| for assembly.
|
| Efficiency more often comes into conflict with durability,
| and sometimes safety.
| its_ethan wrote:
| Right but what I'm getting at is that there can be
| tradeoffs that might make designing for maintainability
| mean optimizing for something less important to the end
| user.
|
| Do you optimize an engine for how easy it is to replace a
| filter once or twice a year (most likely done by someone
| the average car-owner is already paying to change their oil
| for them), or do you optimize it for getting better gas
| mileage over every single mile the car is driven?
|
| We're talking about a hypothetical car and neither of us (I
| assume) design engines like this, I'm just trying to
| illustrate a point about tradeoffs existing. To your own
| point of efficiency being a trade with durability, that's
| not in a vacuum. If a part is in a different location with
| a different loading environment, it can be more/less
| durable (material changes leading to efficiency
| differences), more/less likely to break (maybe you service
| the hard-to-service part half as often when it's in a
| harder to service spot), etc.
| manquer wrote:
| Only TCO matters, that is the efficiency you actually
| optimize for, ie dollar per mile[1]not miles per gallon.
|
| If the car is going to need to be in shop for days
| needing you to have a replacement rental because the
| model is difficult to service and the cost of service
| itself is not cheap , that can easily outweigh any
| marginal mpg gain .
|
| Similarly because it is expensive and time consuming you
| may likely skip service schedules , the engine will then
| have a reduced life, or seizes up on the road and you
| need an expensive tow and rebuild etc .
|
| You are implicitly assuming none of these will change if
| the maintenance is more difficult , that is not the case
| though
|
| This is what OP is implying when he says a part with
| regular maintenance schedule to be easily accessible.
|
| [1] of which fuel is only one part , substantial yes but
| not the only one
| its_ethan wrote:
| I'm just gonna copy and paste a response to another
| similar comment:
|
| The point that I am making (obviously, I think) is that
| tradeoffs exist, even if you don't think the right
| decision was made, your full view into the trade space is
| likely incomplete, or prioritizes something different
| than the engineers.
|
| Putting some random number of hypothetical mpg
| improvement was clearly a mistake, but I assumed people
| here would be able to get the point I was trying to make,
| instead of getting riled up about the relationship (or
| lack thereof) of oil filters and fuel efficiency.
| manquer wrote:
| I did read that before commenting, to be clear - the
| specific nature of your proposed optimization is not
| important and I took your premise to be true ie it will
| improve fuel efficiency and therefore save some money.
|
| --
|
| In general, the point was it is not operational
| efficiency in ideal conditions alone and serviceability
| is an important component because it can add to the
| overall cost of ownership significantly and individual
| car owners (in comparison to fleet) are typically poorer
| in factoring this in their buy decisions.
|
| ----
|
| It comes down to numbers , if the proposed change,
| results in 10% improvement probably not worth it, 10x
| then definitely so .
|
| I.e will the car become 22 MPGe or 200MPGe . Larger the
| gain more trade-offs like serviceability or life
| expectancy all can be sacrificed.
|
| hybrids costs more upfront (both sets of expensive
| components - transmission/motor +engine/battery) but
| still work if driven enough miles, as the gain in
| efficiency makes up for the upfront.
|
| Exact number of that miles is localized to you and me -
| depends things like tax difference including tolls, gas
| prices, MPGe diff, electricity prices, interest and
| purchasing power of currency other consumables costs like
| tires and so on.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| I'm no mechanical engineer, but I would assume those extreme
| tradeoffs occur more often when repairability is not
| prioritized from early iterations. I.e. "boss we're 90% into
| the design cycle why are you bringing up the position of the
| oil filter now?"
|
| There's definitely a programming equivalent as well...
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| That is fine if you are say building a race car that will
| be essentially rebuilt anyway in between races, or in
| general where 0.1% extra performace/less weight from non-
| repair-friendly placement might be worth it.
|
| Not for normal car
| batisteo wrote:
| Most cars sold in the US are not aerodynamic so it seems a
| couple of mpg isn't the focus anyway
| 0x457 wrote:
| I think oil filter located somewhere sinful usually in cars
| that are aerodynamically sound.
| carefree-bob wrote:
| The US is filled with bubble cars like everywhere else.
| There isn't really much difference between cars across the
| world. Well, China is unique with like 100 automakers all
| searching for customers, but for most of the world, it's
| Toyota, VW, Hyundai/Kia, Stellantis, GM, Renault/Nissan,
| Ford as the top global producers and they sell everywhere.
| Sure there are some special models in local markets, but
| those are mostly rebadged versions you can get elsewhere.
|
| Fun Fact: Along with the "Bees are disappearing" scare,
| which was just measurement error, there has been an
| "insects are disappearing" scare, due to the fact people's
| windshields are not covered with bugs like they used to be.
| However that is because cars have gotten more aerodynamic
| so fewer insects are hitting the windshield.
| coeneedell wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populatio
| ns?...
|
| Um I'm pretty sure that's not the only evidence for
| insect population declines.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Along with the "Bees are disappearing" scare, which
| was just measurement error_
|
| Or fixed? The suspected cause at the time was pneumatic
| planter dust-off and addressing that was as simple as
| adding a baffle to direct the dust to the ground, so it
| was quickly adopted once identified.
| ww520 wrote:
| If the engine failed due to missing oil change because of the
| difficulty, the whole car is gone. The waste in cost,
| material, and environmental impact far outweighs the savings
| in 2mpg improvement.
| its_ethan wrote:
| Glad to know in this hypothetical car scenario the owner
| decided to not get an oil change leading to the total loss
| of the vehicle. That seems very realistic and definitely
| something that car designs should be optimized around.
|
| Or, we consider that 2mpg across 100,000 cars can save
| 3,500,000 gallons of gas being burned for the average
| American driving ~12k miles per year. And maybe things
| aren't so black and white. You're argument, in this
| hypothetical, is that negligent car owner who destroys
| their car because they're choosing to not change the oil is
| worth burning an extra 3.5millon gallons of gasoline.
| bena wrote:
| To be fair, you are constructing an entirely hypothetical
| car scenario where oil filter placement leads to a 5-10%
| increase in fuel efficiency.
|
| We're already in the land of the fucking ridiculous.
| Let's have fun with it.
| its_ethan wrote:
| I'm using this hypothetical to illustrate the point that:
| tradeoffs exist, and that you (we) may not have full
| insight into the full complexity of the trade space that
| the engineers were working with.
|
| Putting some random number of hypothetical mpg
| improvement was clearly a mistake, but I assumed people
| here would be able to get the point I was trying to make,
| instead of getting riled up about the relationship (or
| lack thereof) of oil filters and fuel efficiency.
| bena wrote:
| And he's using his hypothetical to illustrate the point
| that: even while some benefits may exist, there are other
| considerations besides one measure of efficiency.
|
| That's the point _you 're_ not getting. People get your
| point. They're just pointing out that sometimes the juice
| isn't worth the squeeze. And for something that needs to
| be regularly accessed, it's better for it to be
| accessible than strictly optimal.
|
| And during the whole debacle, you've demonstrated that
| you don't have much insight to the trade space at all.
| And you're so dead set on "not being wrong" here that now
| you're accusing everyone around you of being riled up.
| We're chill, dude. We're starting to worry about you.
| its_ethan wrote:
| > there are other considerations besides one measure of
| efficiency
|
| Bruh that's literally what I was saying? Instead of how
| efficiently can you replace a filter in an engine,
| another benefit might exist instead. Said another way,
| maybe the "juice" gained from redesigning a fuel filter
| system instead of using an existing one form another car
| wasn't worth the "squeeze" of cost and development for
| the company.
|
| Kinda feels like maybe you (the majority of replies to my
| original message) didn't get the point, and instead took
| this as some literal suggestion that I think engines need
| to have filters in certain spots.
|
| The fact that so many people took this as literally as
| they did, and seemingly chose to ignore the underlying
| message of "hey maybe consider tradeoffs exist" makes me
| start to worry about you too.
| bena wrote:
| No, you were saying that accessibility is subservient to
| efficiency.
|
| _And_ you were explicitly told several times that your
| hypothetical efficiency just does not exist. So
| constantly saying, "Yeah, but what _if_ " looks like
| you're being obstinate for its own sake.
|
| If the majority of people "didn't get your point",
| consider that maybe you aren't great at getting your
| point across.
| its_ethan wrote:
| > No, you were saying that accessibility is subservient
| to efficiency
|
| Where do you believe I said that?
|
| I don't recall saying anywhere that efficiency _should
| be_ a priority over accessibility. I said "what if" to
| create a hypothetical to demonstrate that it _could be_.
| You know, trying to introduce nuance to a conversation.
| You can read that as obstinance for its own sake if you
| want.
|
| My hypothetical not existing doesn't mean that some
| similar scenario isn't true. That's kind of the point of
| a hypothetical, it's an imaginary example to demonstrate
| a point. My suggestion that fuel efficiency could be
| effected may not be correct, but the efficiency of using
| a pre-existing design to save on new parts/labor very
| likely is true.
|
| Again, people choosing to latch onto a hypothetical and
| tear that down instead of treating it like a tool for
| illustrating a point like it's intended to be is really
| odd and related to:
|
| > If the majority of people "didn't get your point",
| consider that maybe you aren't great at getting your
| point across.
|
| As I've said in other replies, I've already noted this- a
| specific mention of a hypothetical 2mpg that seems to
| really have distracted people lol
| carefree-bob wrote:
| This is like saying you can get a 10% improvement in battery
| life by changing where you position the RAM on your
| motherboard.
|
| There is just no universe in which placing an oil filter in
| one location or another is going to make such a difference.
| You'd have to mount it completely outside the engine, say
| sitting as a cylinder on top of the hood, and even there you
| are not going to get a 2mpg improvement.
| its_ethan wrote:
| Sorry we're talking about a hypothetical car engine, and as
| an analogy to software development. I'm not an expert in
| designing car engines like you, but acting like this
| example being not fully realistic is some kind of "gotcha"
| for the point I'm making is really frustrating.
|
| The point that I am making (obviously, I think) is that
| tradeoffs exist, even if you don't think the right decision
| was made, your full view into the trade space is likely
| incomplete, or prioritizes something different than the
| engineers.
|
| Based on the replies, saying there's a hypothetical 2mpg
| improvement to be had was a mistake, everyone is latching
| on to that like there's some actual engine we're
| investigating.
| carefree-bob wrote:
| No, the point is that the GP statement missed the point.
| Say we hear about a company laying off 10% of workers,
| and someone says "What if they needed to lay off those
| workers in order to meet their HIPAA obligations and
| protect user privacy?" Now clearly that would be an
| argument that is either bad faith, or just spectacularly
| uninformed. We do not then go on to discuss the relative
| importance of HIPAA compliance versus employment. The
| reason companies lay off workers is because of a decline
| in market demand or efforts at cost cutting. That is the
| reason. It's not to help the environment. It's not to
| protect customer data. It's not because this is the year
| of the Pig. Anyone who makes those arguments should get
| responded to in a way to clearly points out it is a
| specious argument.
|
| The reason why automakers place serviceable parts in bad
| locations is due to either incompetence (If you are, say,
| Bentley) or malicious design (almost everyone else) --
| e.g. they do not prioritize serviceability. Car makers
| really hate that ordinary people can repair their own
| vehicles. There were proposals in the 1960s to try to
| lock shut the hood so that car owners wouldn't be able to
| open it and service the cars on their own. Hyundai just
| announced that they will not allow car owners to retract
| their own parking brakes when they want to replace brake
| pads. You need a login with a website and prove that you
| are a professional mechanic before you can retract your
| own parking brakes. This is done, ostensibly, for "cyber
| security" reasons. But the real reason is that Hyundai
| does not want people to be able to service their own
| cars, they want you to take the car to a dealer. They
| also are not fans of independent mechanics, they would
| prefer if everyone that touched the car had a business
| relationship with Hyundai and was under contract with
| them. The fact that you can work on your car is an
| endless source of pain for manufacturers, and when they
| repeatedly make it hard to work on your car, or try to
| lock down parts so that you can't pull an old seat heater
| from the junkyard and use it to replace your own failed
| seat heater -- that is all part of the war on independent
| repair.
|
| So what should be discussed is the environment of
| hostility to serviceability, everything from insisting
| that transmission oil is "lifetime" to forcing you to pay
| money to the manufacturer if you want to read the data
| from your sensors, or making it extremely hard to do
| simple things like changing a headlight or replacing a
| battery. All of that is part of the same issue, which is
| hostility to end user repair. It has nothing to do with
| improving gas mileage, or ending world hunger, or
| celebrating the Year of the Pig. These are all equally
| specious arguments.
| its_ethan wrote:
| ok, glad you seem to have everything figure out so
| definitively
| Arch-TK wrote:
| You made a "well actually" comment in which you
| demonstrated your lack of knowledge on the topic, _and_
| stated a truism which didn't apply to the thing you were
| replying to.
|
| Yes, I'm sure most people on this website have ran into
| seemingly bad design choices which made sense once they
| knew more context. But that doesn't mean that all bad
| design choices are like this.
|
| Specifically dumb oil filter placement is an example of
| such a case where the _only_ legitimate justification is
| design cost saving for the manufacturer (re-using an
| existing design meant for a different car).
|
| You can maybe argue that saving on design costs (and I
| guess also re-tooling costs) is a saving that gets passed
| onto the consumer. But that consumer is unlikely to feel
| like they're saving much money when cars depreciate
| faster than ice cubes in the desert, and when their oil
| change is 2+ times more expensive every 6 months. Really
| that cost savings will only really benefit the
| manufacturer (well, at least until they tarnish their
| reputation).
| its_ethan wrote:
| > Yes, I'm sure most people on this website have ran into
| seemingly bad design choices which made sense once they
| knew more context. But that doesn't mean that all bad
| design choices are like this.
|
| I'm literally just saying the yin to this yang. Just
| because you run into a design that feels malicious
| doesn't mean that it always is.
|
| Again, sorry for the sin of trying to make an
| analogy/example of something I'm not an expert in. You
| can rest easy at night knowing I'll never do it again.
|
| You also pretty neatly laid out how re-using an existing
| design meant for a different car leads to some benefits
| to the end customer. Sure the full cost savings don't
| ever make it to the buyer, but there's still net wins in
| not spinning up new manufacturing processes (as you say).
| So I'm not sure why you're coming at this so combatively?
| Because I dared float the idea that maybe it's an engine
| efficiency thing we're unaware of, instead of part re-use
| cost/lead time efficiency improvement? Again, sorry for
| stepping outside of my lane...
| Arch-TK wrote:
| We don't have magic oil filters which last even 22k miles.
| You should be replacing them every 6 months / 6k miles, or 12
| months / 12k miles depending on your risk tolerance (some
| people suggest even half my short interval).
|
| Anyone who actually drives their car regularly will be doing
| an oil change at least twice a year. If an oil change takes
| more than 30 minutes of actual labour time of an
| inexperienced mechanic, it's going to be a serious financial
| burden which will likely outweigh any 2mpg improvement.
| its_ethan wrote:
| I'm just gonna copy and paste a response to another similar
| comment: The point that I am making (obviously, I think) is
| that tradeoffs exist, even if you don't think the right
| decision was made, your full view into the trade space is
| likely incomplete, or prioritizes something different than
| the engineers.
|
| Putting some random number of hypothetical mpg improvement
| was clearly a mistake, but I assumed people here would be
| able to get the point I was trying to make, instead of
| getting riled up about the relationship (or lack thereof)
| of oil filters and fuel efficiency.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| You can also read my reply in my other comment.
|
| But to keep it concise: The core problem is that you are
| stating a truism in response to a famous counter-example
| to specifically that truism. The other problem being that
| you are stating a truism which everyone else is already
| familiar with.
| its_ethan wrote:
| Given how many people have seemingly jumped on
| misinterpreting the truism as me making some claim of a
| specific fuel efficiency improvement, I'd disagree with
| people being already familiar with it.
|
| To be concise as well: it's been duly noted by me that
| contributing to a conversation by attempting to bring in
| nuance is not always well received when you make up a
| hypothetical for a topic people are very touchy about.
| bluGill wrote:
| > We don't have magic oil filters which last even 22k
| miles. You should be replacing them every 6 months / 6k
| miles, or 12 months / 12k miles depending on your risk
| tolerance (some people suggest even half my short
| interval).
|
| We do - they are just a lot bigger.
|
| You should replace the oil filter when it is no longer
| filtering. Replacing it early is a pure waste of money.
| Unfortunately the tests of do you need to change the oil
| filter is more expensive than just replacing the filter so
| just replace it before it can possibly be clogged is the
| right answer. Generally the manufactures recommendations
| are correct and you should follow what they say unless you
| have lab results that say otherwise.
| andsoitis wrote:
| The real issue is that oil filters and gears are really just
| legacy design. EVs don't need them.
|
| So, similar with software design, as in other fields, often a
| problem goes away when you ask a different question.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| EVs also have consumable parts which it would be incredibly
| annoying to place in nonsensical locations.
|
| The obvious one is the battery, and you can argue that modern
| EVs have batteries so expensive that when they are dead the
| car becomes scrap, and - sure, whatever.
|
| But EVs still have: cabin air filters, coolant, brake fluid,
| lubricants in various places (although granted, these
| lubricants will mostly last the service life).
|
| At the end of the day, as long as you have a car which moves,
| and not a statue, it will have things which wear out and
| which should be easy to replace.
|
| Engine oil and oil filters are just an example.
| ang_cire wrote:
| EVs have gears and gear oil in their drive units. There is a
| reduction gear that needs lubrication, as well as the
| differential.
|
| They actually will need oil changes starting anywhere from
| the 50k to 100k mile mark.
|
| Here's the maintenance guide with pictures walking through
| changing the oil and filter for the Rear Drive Unit (RDU) in
| a Tesla Model S:
|
| https://service.tesla.com/docs/ModelS/ServiceManual/Palladiu.
| ..
| carefree-bob wrote:
| You may not know this, but EVs also have oil filters and
| gears. They also having cooling systems. What they don't have
| is an engine (they have motors). But the motors have their
| own cooling system, and the gears have their own oil system
| with filters.
|
| Every moving part - especially gears -- needs to be oiled,
| and whenever you are oiling metal on metal contact such as in
| gears, you are going to want an oil filter to catch worn
| metal debris, to remove it from the oil.
|
| The difference between EVs and ICE vehicles is not that only
| one of them uses oil to reduce friction, but that the oil
| service intervals on EVs are so long that regular oil
| maintenance is not needed, you do it every 60,000 miles or
| whatever the manufacturer recommends, so it's out of mind.
| But that doesn't mean it doesn't require service.
|
| Once EVs have been around for a while and there is an
| established market for used EVs, the people who buy them are
| going to want to change the oil to add more life to the EV.
| So it's something that is dealt with in the long-life
| maintenance, not the monthly maintenance. But when you do the
| oil service, you will curse Tesla for needing to drop the
| battery in order to do it, and all of a sudden you will care
| where things are placed and how accessible they are.
|
| Here is a nice video -- I follow Sam Crac as one of my
| favorite automotive youtubers - and he picked up an old Tesla
| and did an oil service for it. It's a nice watch:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ZNHKjHalY
| kerblang wrote:
| Try replacing the battery. Seems accessible enough at first,
| but ingenious engineering has made batteries the modern rubik's
| cube of auto maintenance.
| bena wrote:
| Define "modern". I have a 2017 Civic and I've had to replace
| the battery a couple of times. There's a holding bar that
| needs to be removed before the battery can be taken out, but
| other than that the only real problem is the weight of the
| thing.
| logancbrown wrote:
| The Ford Maverick (2022+) requires removing the air intake
| to remove the car battery. This is fairly common across
| many new car models.
| snek_case wrote:
| In general it looks like these kinds of changes are
| trying to make it harder for people to do this kind of
| basic maintenance themselves. Force you to go to the
| dealer.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Force you to go to the dealer.
|
| I recommend to never go to the dealer, unless you're
| going there for a warranty or recall repair. A local
| repair shop is always the better option. And if you don't
| know of a trustworthy local shop, take it to the dealer
| for an estimate, and then you know if the local shops are
| bullshitting you (they should come in way under dealer
| prices).
| maury91 wrote:
| I have a 2009 Citroen and the battery is secured with a bolt
| that is under the battery compartment and to access it you
| need to go under the car with a very long wrench, who
| engineered it is a psycho
| GettingOld wrote:
| I had a 2004 Citroen, which needed the front sidelight bulb
| replacing, after investigating for 20 minutes, decided to
| ask the garage how much it would cost next time it was in.
| maury91 wrote:
| I left my Citroen to my mom, and my stepfather has
| calculated that a light bulb costs 3EUR, having the light
| bulb mounted by the mechanic costs 5EUR ( including the
| bulb ), so to save up 2EUR he decided ( with good cause )
| that he will never replace the bulb himself cause it's
| extremely infuriating.
|
| I did manage to replace those bulbs myself, and it's
| ridiculous, it has some sort of spring to hold it in
| place that is extremely hard to open with your fingers,
| and even harder to close. And on top of that you can't
| even see it, you have to take first pictures with your
| phone, understand how it works and then go entirely by
| tactic feedback
| GettingOld wrote:
| In this case, I couldn't see how to get at the bulb
| without either losing lots of skin or dismantling half
| the front end of the car - so I was happy to pay the half
| hour rate they charged. I believe they went in from below
| the car with something to reach it and mirrors.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Since Dante wrote _The Inferno_, there has been a circle in
| Hell added where car designers are endlessly changing the
| spark plugs on AMC Javelins, bleeding brakes on Ford
| Escorts, and similar maintenance tasks which the design
| made more difficult than is reasonable.
| sqircles wrote:
| Had to help a fella replace a battery in what I believe was
| a Mitsubishi... had to remove the front tire and the wheel
| well liner first!
| RaftPeople wrote:
| My wife had a Chrysler Sebring.
|
| The battery is in a compartment in the left front wheel well.
| You have to remove that wheel to access the battery.
|
| I was instantly impressed by the pure creativity and artistic
| expression the team employed for that design.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Dang
| paulddraper wrote:
| I've replaced many batteries over the past two decades with
| no problems.
|
| All of them have been in Ford (or Saturn).
| cineticdaffodil wrote:
| Oh noe, noe no.. you want to crowdsource debugging.. describe the
| error and your expectations, then build software by machine
| learning while screwing up.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| biz > user
|
| is capitalism. Removal of that isn't capitalism. Non-removal of
| that is capitalism.
| cestith wrote:
| Richard Brand says the most important thing to grow a
| successful business is to put your employees above all else.
| Being the place where everyone wants to work and cares about
| their job is the way to get the most loyal customers. Having
| the most loyal customers is how you make the most money over
| the long term.
|
| Survivorship bias exists, but look at all the Virgin brands and
| at places like Google. So for a moment let's posit he's
| correct.
|
| So, then, the problem would seem not to be capitalism
| generally. It would be the sort of short-term quarterly goals
| capitalism we see so often in recent years.
| psychoslave wrote:
| It went on the good track, but failed to generalize that [?] is
| what apply among all these terms.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| Does the ">" mean "greater than" or is it meant to symbolize an
| arrow in a ordered sequence?
| esafak wrote:
| More important than:
|
| "We arrived at a little model that expresses the relative
| importance of various factors in software development..."
| moralestapia wrote:
| Good question, to my it was "greater than" but now I read it
| again with the other interpretation ... and it still makes
| sense? Weird.
| btown wrote:
| > But when you run your code in production, the KISS mantra takes
| on a new dimension. It's not just about code anymore; it's about
| reducing the moving parts and understanding their failure modes.
|
| This sentence, itself, takes on new meaning in the age of agentic
| coding. "I'm fine with treating this new feature as greenfield
| even if it reimplements existing code, because the LLM will
| handle ensuring the new code meets biz and user expectations" is
| fine in isolation... but it may mean that the code does not
| benefit from shared patterns for observability, traffic shaping,
| debugging, and more.
|
| And if the agent inlines code that itself had a bug, that later
| proves to be a root cause, the amount of code that needs to be
| found and fixed in an outage situation is not only larger but
| more inscrutable.
|
| Using the OOP's terminology, where biz > user > ops > dev is
| ideal, this is a dev > ops style failure that goes far beyond
| "runs on my machine" towards a notion of "is only maintainable in
| isolation."
|
| Luckily, we have 1M context windows now! We can choose to say:
| "Meticulously explore the full codebase for ways we might be able
| to refactor this prototype to reuse existing functionality,
| patterns, and services, with an eye towards maintainability by
| other teams." But that requires discipline, foresight, and clock-
| time.
| signa11 wrote:
| yes, run by machines, read by humans. so ?
| tabs_or_spaces wrote:
| Once I wrote the perfect piece of software. It was so perfect
| that there was literally no bugs for months.
|
| How could this have happened? Well, the code was shipped but no
| customer was running it in production.
| arealaccount wrote:
| Software dev would be so easy without the customers
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