[1] https://gigamonkeys.com/book/lather-rinse-repeat-a-tour-of-t... (the last paragraph, search for "remote debugging" in the page)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49914000

Points: 18

# Comments: 0

This I think is a standard practice in any large office building in France (Europe? Global?) too, regardless of the frequency of the power cuts. I don't remember witnessing any power cuts in the office (not since long ago anyway), but in most of the places there are systematically white and red sockets, red ones being powered through a UPS. So, server machines go into red ones. Well, we don't have servers anymore, but the sockets are still there anyway. Hopefully UPS too, LOL.

(I suppose people downvoting this don’t know the reference. Way to make us feel old :) )

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49843174

Points: 364

# Comments: 111

I am still not sure if the joke was bad or if everyone takes everything too seriously nowadays.

Look, I don’t mind it but let us know - are you training some model on our inputs ? :)

Pun intended?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail_fast_(business)

I would also add ZX Spectrum keyboard with all the keywords on it. G/GOTO, L/LET, P/PRINT etc. Was lots of fun.

We should have engraved common actions on the keys when we could, before every software invented its own set of keyboard shortcuts.

[1] https://allthatsinteresting.com/abandoned-malls

Most AI companies are not sharing it, though. They appropriated it and resell it.

Every time I see those I also see the lesson - count your maintenance costs. It is a nice artificial water channel, yes, but will the city have the money to run it, clean it, supply water, etc.?

Of course I know that the original (real estate) developers did the cost analysis, but when you see those abandoned places - very much objectively you can conclude that they made an error. A miscalculation, or an error in judgement.

--

Back to software I think scope creep causes many problems: the team loses focus, can be demotivated by delivering the features no one needs, etc. - all real and serious problems. But ultimately it is the ever growing maintenance cost that has a real ability to annihilate all team capacity.

Everything we build, however high-quality it is, needs to be maintained and all projects should include this into their "run" phase budget. And growing maintenance costs only aggravate other scope creep issues.

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And that's the tragedy of being the engineer/engineering manager/CTO even. Exactly like the post says, you don't get "promoted" for stuff you reject to do. I had countless occasions of successfully convincing product teams and boards to abandon or rescope the project, and although I am convinced it did good for the companies in the end - the engineering department ends up being a buzzkill :shrug: . I cope with it, but it never really settled with me. If anyone has the answer to how to approach this in a healthy way I am very much interested in your experience.

I too feel exactly what you are saying. I also think that a lot of good role models are simply often among less visible people, sometimes less ambitious. I am not assuming any hard correlation between the two, though. And we also need to accept that we are all only humans, not infallible. Values are more important than singular acts (within reasonable acceptance limits of course).

Anyway. I strongly recommend reading what Bill Gates has to say about AI. I can be wrong, but based on your comment it seems to me that you may find it interesting.