98 karma · joined September 26, 2024
This is a good point. My initial thought is that the developers would know best what features their application needs? Furthermore, it's work that every user benefits from, rather than requiring an IT professional to reconfigure for each use case.
What do you see as the downsides?
Economists argue markets are efficient because of the incentive structure they place on actors. There is a plethora of writing about government inefficiencies due to not having these. It the most distilled form: they are insulated from both positive and negative consequences of behaving efficiently.
Due to this, government entities have a unique set of traits, but efficiency tends to not be one of them. But who cares? Efficiency isn't always the goal. When it comes to making laws, efficiency isn't the goal, long term values are more important.
The post office was created with full knowledge that it would be a net loss, but it was felt to be institutionally important to have universal access to communication across the nation. Now that this is an antiquated method of communication, and there is a market for the remaining services, it is mostly an inefficient make-work program for a well organized voting block.
Now you I can imagine all the distopian problems of a private military, but I'm going to guess efficiency is not one of those (The US Gov believe Blackwater saves them money, btw).
That the original comment I replied to is false: "Good luck designing crash resilient structures without simulating it on FEM based software."
Now what's my opinion? FEM raises the quality floor of engineering output overall, and more rarely the ceiling. But, excessive reliance on computer simulation often incentivizes complex, fragile, and expensive designs.
> passenger aircraft safety are leagues better today
Yep, but that's just restating the pros. Local iteration and testing.
> You're replying to a practicing mechanical engineer
Oh drpossum and I are getting to know each other.
I agree with his main point. It's an essential tool for combatting certifications and reviews in the world of increasing regulatory and policy based governance.
Yes, I agree that incentives can get strange, but that's the mindset to understand from executives.
This is the best advantage. Being an "outsider" in the sense of having a special role (age, status, etc) can be a huge aid in avoiding bullshit.
In other words, the work that doesn't change the underlying reality of the product?
> We did "just fine" without cars for the majority of humanity
We went to the moon, invented aircraft, bridges, skyscrapers, etc, all without FEM. So that's why this is a bad comparison.
> If you asked a mechanical engineer to ignore those tools in their job they'd (rightly) throw a fit.
Of course. That's what they are accustomed to. 80/20 paper techniques that were replaced by SW were forgotten.
When tests are cheap, you make a lot of them. When they are expensive, you do a few and maximize the information you learn from them.
I'm not arguing FEM doesn't provide net benefit to the industry.
I noticed that they are about as long and complex as the C versions. In early C++/STL days part of the pitch was reimplementing core utils in a much more concise way. In wonder if the is a result of focusing on that application, or a coincidence of design decisions.
Certainly computers allow more complexity, so there is interplay between what it enables and what’s driven by good engineering.
Does not mean:
Using anti-cheat -> poor networking
Ops comment is absolutely true. Engineers in games who are good have high incentive to 5x their salary and lifestyle by doing anything else.
This was not true in 1997. The industry also just attracts a different crowd, more adjacent to film and entertainment than it used to.
I will not be playing games that make me feel like a prisoner. The experience taking standardized tests is enough for one life.
> but this level of dismissiveness is a little difficult to reckon with
Let me summarize the key economic points that I feel have been dismissed: - any kind of nail you want, you can buy right now. - You can also buy nails of higher quality than anything that’s existed in preindustrial time - popularity of which kind of nail is driven by demand
If I’m hitting this issue at random, others are hitting it too.
He doesn’t say this.
> NOT the same as the "isomorphic equivalence" which is more difficult, strict, and abstract.
This is what the exercise is about. So I would recommend reading before making assumptions.
Of course there are more than one definition of equivalence and isomorphism, but the one explored there is just as interesting as the comment I’m replying to.
drpossum you stop with these gotcha posts? This is our 3rd encounter.
This an empirical argument about nails. Are you just saying that to emphasize your confidence?
> cut nails
I just googled and there are literally dozens of brands of this product.
Even so this preference appears to be a niche opinion of artisan woodworkers, not a failure mode of furniture and construction.
> The switch to wire was a detail of the manufacturing processes, not of consumer demand
Yes it is. They wanted to pay less for nails and the cheaper manufacturing served that need. If it mattered they would pay more.
> but purely because it's a design that scales for manufacture.
In other words, people like to reminisce about hand made goods. But when it comes to paying for them, they usually prefer the ones that work well at a fraction of the cost.
You can’t claim that intricate items with fine details are not manufacturable at scale (see the iPhone?). So your cause and effect are backwards. Manufacturing did not dictate old methods became less prevelant. Consumers did.
And once again, your claim that higher quality ones don’t exist is wrong too. I guarantee we can find a supplier of many varieties of decorative nails. They are just more expensive.
That’s ridiculous. Many people just prefer to pay for cheap nails because they are good enough for the application, and that’s a good thing because this option did not previously exist. But the high end still exists and is higher quality than ever.
Capitalism has problems, but providing low complexity commodity improvements at scale and quality is not one of them.
The government does not provide a more efficient military or education. It compels individuals to pay for something which is in the collective good, but not their personal interest.
In other words, there should be less expensive and less sophisticated care providers for less complex needs.
Only in the US is there such a cartel on medical care.
> Do you prove that every line of arithmetic in your program will not overflow
My point is the analysis takes time, training, and is easy to regress. In practice programs operate within a reasonable N and if you push the limits they will fail. Or the devs wait for a bug report, and then set a pessimistic limit on user input.
Also undefined != crash. Your compiler has options for what to do when signed overflow is detected.