Consider the Thermometer | Hacker News Reader

Consider the Thermometer

neverworkintheory.org

29 pointspabs311 comments

one of those unfortunately-reasonable-at-the-time decisions that have had distressing long-term consequences

This is a very silly statement. Of all the harms to the environment and human health misuse of mercury has caused, the share belonging to thermometers would probably be invisible on the pie chart.

True, the two biggest sources of mercury pollution are mining and coal burning:

https://www.epa.gov/international-cooperation/mercury-emissi...

Thermometers are a good example of our modern society's inability to make simple, useful and effective.

Modern thermometers are either very expensive ($400+ for one certified by NIST) or Chinese garbage. Touchless thermometers from reputable companies are not accurate within 1.5°. Digital oral thermometers don't agree with each other, often within 4° of difference. Rarely do they give reproducible results. Alcohol / gallium thermometers, uncallibrated and out of China might as well be a fever fortune cookie.

200 years ago we could measure temperatures within a degree. Today we can't get out from under the endless barrage of garbage molded in the shape of a thing that used to work.

What exactly is his point here? What the hell is measuring software? We don't have a biological software sense, so his analogy doesn't make sense to me from the get go.

Software has many different uses and many things that can be measured. Is he suggesting we should only have one ruler to measure it with? Baking bread, as one of his examples, doesn't only use one ruler, it uses at least 4 (heat, time, weight, volume).

We've had tractors for 200 years, where's our tractor ruler?

Smells like bs to me.

No, I think he's just saying that coming up with new ways to measure things that you wouldn't think are measurable might be important.

Yes, it's a rather vague and inspirational, a Ted Talk-like speech. Maybe it'd be better to go deeper on the history of thermometers and let people draw their own conclusions.

> We don't have a biological software sense, so his analogy doesn't make sense to me from the get go.

The long list of people making subjective statements about software quality would seem to demonstrate that we do have a biological software sense.

Do we have a biological sense of logic?

We definitely have a biological sense of "fair" which is at least logic adjacent

I loved this article.

It highlights perfectly a lesson I personally learned tragically: the modern times and modernity are often looked at with awe, while in practice, the limits of what is possible hit us always too soon.

I don't mean to ignore the progress of the science and societies, but rather to encourage everyone to try to be aware, imaginative and curious of what is yet to be discovered. So that we can walk towards our future with an energy similar in intensity to the awe we have for what has already been achieved.

"Today is tomorrow's yesterday" of sort.

I don't really understand the point being made, and I get the feeling the author thinks the point is profound enough to not need stating. But to me, it isn't clear at all, and I have no idea what comparison is being drawn between measuring temperature and making sprints 2 weeks long.

I think they are saying, that though Lines Of Code turned out to be a poor metric of programmer productivity, there are other metrics not yet invented (but being worked on?) that may be valid.

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