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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

I'm reminded of a discussion we had here a few weeks ago, where somebody noted that humanity wouldn't be able to invent, for example, a machine to automatically rack pins at a bowling alley today.

The 2018 solution to that problem would automatically involve computer vision, AI and robotics. The idea that one could construct a giant mechanical device the size of an entire bowling lane that is purpose built to lift, sweep, collect, rack, and place pins with no capacity for customization whatsoever wouldn't even occur to today's generation of engineers.

You can see it happening in some of the comments here.

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"If all you have is a hammer..."

You're talking to software engineers here. Equating 'humanity' to us on Hacker News forgets about all of the mechanical engineers who would do a great job of racking those pins.

Both observations have equal validity for middle-/upper-class denizens whom can spend money on increasing entropy much faster. Go to anywhere remote and/or poor, and the better-to-do outsiders will be gobsmacked by inventiveness that, to the local, will seem mundane and vital. For example, one of my great-grandfathers made a continously self-cleaning oil-filter for farm equipment... the sort of thing corporations clearly wouldn’t offer for monetized consumables reasons.

Was it two cans at different elevations, with a length of sisal rope suspended in an arc between them? Because lots of people "invented" that...

king_nothing did not say his great-grandfather "invented" anything. He said his great-grandfather made it.

My apologies. I suppose I must have read the word "inventiveness" and just sort of mentally smeared it over the next few sentences.

I’m sure I’m being daft, but how would that arrangement function as a self cleaning filter?

The sisal rope will wick based on the elevation change and deposit clean oil to the lower receptacle.

Ah, so the sisal rope is just a simple filter, and not a "continuously self-cleaning" filter? I presume it's eventually fouled and must be disgarded? So this must not have been to which the ancestor was originally referring.

Just put a chip in it #internetofshit

Over time the idea of what "computing can do" has evolved to a point that now a days it is even used to "implement the behaviour of a mechanical system" rather than just being a tool to do data processing. The problem of building the mechanical system basically boils down to what all components and what all connections between the components are required to achieve the desired behaviour. This would be what a mechanical engineer would think about. A software engineer on the other hand would think about the components required and the algorithm that would control the components to achieve the desired behaviour. Both approaches have their pros and cons but as the desired behaviour get more and more complex, the algorithmic approach tends to be more simple and feasible.

I disagree with this.

There was talk on ha hackaday the other day about converting a windshield-wiper motor to a servo with additional components, and another user commented that the newer wiper motors are servos that have a built-in CAN bus and no mechanical linkages.

And more expensive.

It still just wipes the windows.

And if you've ever had a mechanical linkage fail, or noticed that wiper linkages only work for certain geometries, you appreciate the reliability and versatility that comes from having separate motors.

Also, one wiper arm can be completely jammed or disabled and the other still works, where a mechanical linkage would be down for the count.

Cost will come down. Power windows used to be a luxury item too, now they're ubiquitous because the hand-crank mechanism is not only more expensive to produce, it also placed constraints on door panel styling, and having a single door design is cheaper overall.

When the hood and windshield don't have to accommodate a wiper linkage, engine packaging gets easier, allowing designs that could be safer, cheaper, more efficient, more reliable, or some combination thereof.

These are built for a reason. CANbus means they share the wires with lots of other components. Wiring and the complexity in the other end of that wire have a cost too.

Mechanical solutions often weigh more, as well. We're supposed to be designing for better gas mileage, aren't we?

Good gas mileage is one of the many design goals. Another important one is reliability.

and theoretically a computer-driven windshield wiper would be able to respond to weather conditions better than a purely mechanical one, improving safety (perhaps marginally, but that's ok by me). I really appreciate my auto-rain-sensing windshield wipers.

As I said complex behaviour would benefit from computing. I don't see car wipers having complex behaviour that they would need computing to implement it. Also the complexity of the behaviour is a spectrum and not just a on or off thing. You need to consider all the various properties to figure out the best balance in the solution you come up with. On the industry side of things, companies will fit everything with computer and sell it at higher cost coz thats what their goal is i.e to make more and more money, they don't care about the best solution, all they care about is how they can sell expensive solutions and use proper advertisement to portray their solution as the best one (even though it is not).

Many modern cars are equipped with rain sensors that auto adjust the speed and frequency of the wipers, and they seamlessly move from one setting to the other instead of having distinct steps or settings like wipers of old.

I can see why a programmable wiper motor is useful that scenario; send the speed and frequency as arguments and have the motor adjust on the fly.

It's probably not about the complexity of the wipers, it's about the complexity of the wiring system. By putting everything on a bus you only need to run one set of wires around the entire car, rather than individual control wires to each gizmo.

With multiple wipers and no mechanical linkage, preventing blade collisions becomes a concern.

I think this is a bit of a unique case because we're assuming up front that we know how the problem would be framed.

In 2018, it would be odd to see a problem like this where people want pins shaped exactly the same way to be set up exactly the same way and that determine success for decades and decades. If (somehow, out of context) someone asked me for such a machine, I'd immediately be asking why not a different (or random) arrangement for a tougher challenge? Or for training? What about skinnier or fatter pins to control difficulty a little?

Those things only seem strange now because we're all accustomed to bowling being played exactly the same way our entire lives. If it were invented in 2018, I don't think it would look the same.

You'd almost be irresponsible as a software engineer to have someone explain what a bowling pin-setting machine should do, and then build it to do exactly (and only) that. For anything other than "bowling, exactly as specified," you'd be over-engineering an exact-fit solution only for your competitors to build something better and more extensible (with more bowling features / challenges) in six months.

Hmm sounds like you've identified a terrific opportunity to disrupt the game of bowling!

Or in less sarcastic terms, boring is an old, old game; the proof is in the pudding.

Today's generation of software engineers maybe, but thankfully humanity is a lot bigger than that. There are huge numbers of engineers who come up with practical non-digital solutions; take a look at farming or manufacturing equipment.

I don’t think this is true.

It may be true if you asked software people to build it.

Ask some mechanical engineers.

Yeah, this isn't even close to true, and honestly I think it's an issue that so many people seem to think it's true

Have today's engineers somehow stopped believing that the simpler thing is the most useful? Or is it that writing some code to glue together off-the-shelf parts is cheaper and easier than designing and manufacturing a giant machine?

One point is that pushing software into products gives companies more control and power.

* The software can collect data about the user.

* The software can prevent repairability by the user.

* The software can enforce obsolenscence (see the absurdity of smart TVs: an expensive display that can last for 20 years bundled with a super cheap computer that is obsolete in 2).

* The software can limit the user's options, in the manufacturer's favor.

> Have today's engineers somehow stopped believing that the simpler thing is the most useful?

Simplicity is a means to an end. There's no point in a "simpler" solution if it's more expensive and harder to maintain.

> Or is it that writing some code to glue together off-the-shelf parts is cheaper and easier than designing and manufacturing a giant machine?

Exactly.

Good engineering is about meeting the client's needs, not about showing off your own virtuosity. Too many on HN seem to forget that.

I would argue that if a solution is more expensive or harder to maintain, it is not simpler. Teleologically speaking, being simpler is a bigger umbrella which covers many facets of the intended solution.

I don't think "more expensive" is a valid criterion. When you replace a big chunk of metal with 20 carefully-designed parts that come out to be a third of the price, you have not made things simpler.

Even if it comes out as equally difficult to maintain.

Simplicity includesthe dimension of risks imposed by technologically complex solutions.

My brain just did something weird. Instead of instantly recognizing two concatenated words, it spent a while trying to work out the pronunciation of an apparently old English word, before Occam’s razor finally kicked in, hopefully before my vocabulary absorbed an errant entry.

Apologies (and too late to edit). Really crappy tablet soft-keyboard, and miss-, non-, and duplicate- keyregistrations.

That along with lack of preview or spellcheck, scroll-away-from-post mechanics, and tiny edit boxes, are my kryptonite.

Occasionally an amusing typo emerges, though not sufficient to compensate for the pain.

I don't think so. It's just easy to over-optimize things because you can.

Personal case in point. I've been hacking together some automated plant watering systems around my house. My initial thought was to have moisture detectors, Raspberry Pi, etc. I ended up just empirically figuring out how many seconds per day I needed to turn on the pump and that was good enough and a lot simpler/more reliable.

> Have today's engineers somehow stopped believing that the simpler thing is the most useful?

See how much crap do you have to install before using some modern js framework

For some others, you need to use an Arduino to make a led blink

Or maybe the true engineers are solving other problems.

Spot on. Most traditional engineering (electrical/electronics, chemical, civil) consider bloat and overcomplexity a big design failure.

This is mainly due to the cost of maintaining something during its lifetime.

Your comment sent me down this rabbit hole, happily:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jrGTu8V9wHY

That video was a bit long for my taste but I found another one that I watched instead that explained quite nicely how it works. https://youtu.be/amx6fp0s28c

Same guy also made an animation that gives a very detailed explanation of how the AK-47 works. The AK-47 is nothing short of breathtaking IMO. Wonderful! The guy that came up with the AK-47 was a true genius and a real master of engineering! https://youtu.be/_eQLFVpOYm4

That AK-47 vid was pure art. I always heard that gun is an engineering marvel but never knew why. Thanks for sharing!

Kalachnikov (The _K_ in AK-47) has stated that he dreamed of inventing agriculture equipment. He blames the Nazis by name for having had to invent his famous rifle, even though it was fielded only after the Nazis were defeated.

I saw one recently where each of the pins had tiny wire at the top...

It didn't really affect the game, you could see or notice them. But when setting the pins, it just pulled the wires, and gently relaxed the wires till the pin was standing on it's own.

Sometimes simple does the trick :)

These are called 'string pinsetters'. While they have recently become far, far better in achieving very low "impact" on the game, many bowlers will strongly prefer to play on a "free fall" or normal pinsetter. It's fairly rare but there are definitely circumstances that you just won't see happen on a string pinsetter that can and will occur on free-fall; likewise, there's always the risk that a string ('wire') will catch and topple over an adjacent pin.

Personally, I prefer to bowl with lanes that have well-maintained A2s, or alternatively the newer GS-X pinsetters. I hope to eventually build a pair of lanes in my home (my motivational pipe dream), and I'd almost surely go with one of these two even versus the substantially lower upkeep requirements (mean frames between blackout) of the string pinsetters.

It doesn't always do the trick. :)

Long, long ago when I worked at at bowling alley, when it was busy I'd have to run down to the end of the lanes a few times a night to untangle the strings the pins were attached to.

Some people wouldn't be able to do it and it would be good for them to think about this and realize it, but I hope you don't seriously believe that /humanity/ wouldn't be be able to do it. That vastly underestimates the amount of exactly this kind of problem solving that goes on every day, all over the world.

Don't underestimate humanity by forgetting to look outside of your bubble.

I don’t think anybody invented the whole pinsetting machine and ball return apparatus all at once. That kind of thing was invented through a process of gradual iteration just like software design is done.

Good point; similar to the refutation of the argument that biological eyes are too complex to have been produced without supernaturally intelligent design.

When you only consider the result of a whole pile of small but good design choices, it seems implausible. You have to consider all those steps that led up to the current state. Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that.

To restore your faith in mechanical ingenuity you need to watch Martin from Wintergatan build his Marble Machine X. It's a neat intersection of tech wizardry with CAD and CAM and old fashioned handicraft https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLLYkE3G1HED6rW-bkliH...

To be fair, the solution with the leather thong across the bathroom is ridiculous as well.

Ridiculous in what way? It certainly solves all the constraints given in the article. What do you see that was missed? Are you imagining that it's running through the middle of the room? That's not necessarily the case. if nothing else, it could easily be anchored through a pulley or ring attached to the wall.

Is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17319537 the thread you were thinking of?

In the same way, I've seen people involve Arduino's to solve simple electrical automation problems, when they could've just built a fairly simplistic circuit.

In a lot of cases, using a $4 Arduino clone (or $2 for a Nano clone) is going to be faster/easier/most certain than a $0.50 circuit, especially if you keep a handful of each on the bench.

For one-offs, that seems like a good tradeoff.

Maybe there's room for improvement, a software guided robot could be faster, more efficient, cheaper to run and occupy less space than clunky old machinery.

1st of all, the automated pinsetter is not very old, it's WWII era invention.

2nd where I work, I can clearly see how the 50+ yo engineers think differently than the 40+ yo, who also think differently than the rest.

So yes I don't think the 20-30 yo population would conceive of the pinsetter. I actually doubt they could even describe how the current one works. However the 50+ yo would not do anything else but that, and they could improvise one immediately.

It's a difference between being purpose built and efficient, vs need to thinker. The thinkering aimlessly stops at ~40 yo, when you figured you spent a fair amount of your life goofing around for no good reason (other than sex, money, and your social profile). At one point your realize than you might juts be able to leverage all your assets into something useful.

Okay that last bit was both utopia and off-topic, but it feels good...

I completely and wholly disagree. You walk into any factory that isn't Tesla made in the last decade and you'll know exactly what kind of purpose-built machinery that can be made.

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