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Comment by datsci_est_2015 | Hacker News Reader

datsci_est_2015

Feel like this is the equivalent of a traffic engineer standing at the grand opening of the 5th lane for the highway saying there’s no reason for traffic to be slow anymore.

That is, there’s a misunderstanding of why software (traffic) was slow in the first place, and it has nothing to do with our ability to generate code (number of lanes), even if that code is “high quality”.

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Sorry I can't resist the pedantry but a traffic engineer knows better than anyone that adding a 5th lane (often even a 4th) won't improve traffic except in fairly specific circumstances. :D

But it will definitely improve, either speed or volume.

Locally. Under many circumstances. But always? That's not a universal law, as it's a part of a larger system that may perform more poorly if this leg provides more traffic.

This isn't categorically true either, the real world is delightfully complicated, far more so than you imagine. The way cars interact within a road, as they enter an exit the road, or how they choose their route can all create conditions where adding a lane only makes traffic worse and can reduce both speed and volume during peak traffic hours.

Check out the Downs-Thomson paradox.

I'm really bothered by the mindset of the people against this. People act like induced demand is evil.

In reality, if more people were able to go wherever they wanted to go, that's actually a good thing regardless of if the existing people didn't get to go somewhere faster.

Most people use roads to get to work. It's definitely not where they want to go.

It’s NIMBY in another form

That cannot be an emperical statement. Traffic engineers have absolutely wrecked the american city, largely be ause they didnt know the impact of adding lanes.

It's not the only reason. I think that traffic engineers lack/lacked a feel, a certain gut understanding , an inability to feel through the skin. Just look around you. See and hear them at municipal meetings. They are unable to sensually experience the effects of their work, their praxis.

I've spoken with traffic engineers before, and the consensus I've gotten is that, excusing a few bad apples, much of the problems originate with popular or political interference.

I believe it, but what's the point of having them then.

To do the best they can do within the confines of what's politically acceptable. There's an intersection near me that is just horrendous, but the engineer I talked to, who is now retired, said it was his mentor's task to fix it some 50 years ago. Actually fixing it, though, would require removing parking spaces, and the mayors have routinely vetoed that idea after they received pushback.

The people are to blame. You get what you vote for.

Who's to say they aren't the same as the developers implementing all the bad stuff at <pick your favorite hated tech company>? Listen to what they say, and plenty know it's bad, but they shrug their shoulders because that's what the bosses want and the pay is good.

I mean that was kind of my point, but judging by the responses I may have been too snarky.

Both the traffic engineer and the author of this blogpost are well-qualified enough in their fields of expertise to be careful about the claims that they make with regards to speed and efficiency.

A big issue is how those claims are interpreted by non-technical people, especially in leadership. Would hate for my CEO to stumble upon this blog post and believe, based on the title and a brief skimming, that his engineers just aren’t using AI correctly and that’s why the website still takes a few seconds to load its content.

I agree with traffic example, however, I don’t think it quite applies to software in the same way. Imagine a world where for some reason our current quality of hardware is locked in place; they can never get better or faster in any way shape or form. Then the big tech race will be optimizing software. I personally think that there would be a 10x to even 100x increase in software speed that is possible through many optimizations. The current software incentive is geared more towards adding more features rather than optimizing performance since software engineers know they can always know hardware will keep getting better which will keep their slower, less optimize software at similar speeds. This isn’t a critique of software engineers, simply a statement of the incentives under which they operate.

The author clearly understood this part of the topic and agrees. There are multiple reasons that software is slow.

As you imply, some of them are not because spending time on optimization seems relatively expensive compared to value. But some of them are.

The title is a disservice to the author’s point of view, then, because the article also reads as a “look what agents can do to optimize a toy problem” blog post.

Maybe the author should be a bit more careful about what titles they give their blog posts, lest they be misinterpreted by mere mortals such as myself.

I get the paradox for adding a few lanes…

Imagine traffic not getting any better after adding 1000 lanes in a medium sized town… not just to one area but to every single damn road.

Yet we’ve done this with RAM, CPU, and storage…

The HN crowd understands that, depending on bottleneck, adding a fifth network connection (lane) between 2 nodes may not necessary decrease the latency (travel time).

you dont mesaure the quality of a plane by how much it weighs. but yea i think everything is rot to the core. app to os if just wackness that nobody cared about.

Still a struggle to get coworkers to write docs or tests despite it being effortless.

At the end of the day its a mindset.

What's the public transport of software development? Where can I get good train service here?

> What's the public transport of software development?

Understanding.

just¹ prompt like the lotus philosophy:

Simplify, then add lightness.

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