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A software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is...
mwb1100:
I probably shouldn't be diving into a political-based thread, but here's a few thoughts anyway...
Even if certain mathematical and physical science concepts prove that much can come from simple things, that doesn't mean that all things in society can be simple. Don't forget - there are even some very complex things in mathematics and physics.
And I'm not even sure what the following has to do with 'keeping things simple':
Even the government’s response to the tragically ongoing BP oil spill has been one of triangulation and determined-complexity. Get some supertankers to siphon off the leaking oil? Nope. Help Louisiana Gov. Jindal to build some temporary barrier islands along parts of the coastline? No sir. Keep a boot on the throat of BP — hey, that’s a killer sound bite! Let’s go with that!
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Would these 'simple' solutions even really work? It seems that so far no solutions - simple or complex - have worked yet. Given that the overall tone of the article is that government is making things too complex, let's take the government out of the picture. What's preventing BP from implementing something to fix the leak? Forget fixing the leak - what about dealing with the damage? BP's operation has caused extensive damage, physical and economic. In the world of simple regulations like, “You are free to fail; proceed at your own risk”, I suppose that BP's failure would be the limit of liability for BP. But what if that wasn't even close enough to make the people damaged by BP's failure whole? I guess those people would just be out of luck. Property and livelihood damaged or destroyed by a company running an operation miles away - essentially invisible to many of the people directly affected. I guess BP just isn't following the unwritten rule of common courtesy. Oh well, too bad for those communities with oil on their shores.
And could a world of super-simple regulation even include corporations (at least as legal entities with rights)? I'd guess not - that very concept is rather complex.
And, while a software engineer might tell you that the fastest code is the code that is never called, what does that get you? It's also code that doesn't do anything. If that's what you need, then great. But the real trick (at least in software engineering) is coming up with software that does something useful, while making it run correctly, quickly, and keeping it structured so it can be maintained (for fixing or adding new utility). Some of these goals conflict with each other. Which is why writing software can be a very complex endeavor.
parkint:
But the real trick (at least in software engineering) is coming up with software that does something useful, while making it run correctly, quickly, and keeping it structured so it can be maintained (for fixing or adding new utility). Some of these goals conflict with each other. Which is why writing software can be a very complex endeavor.
-mwb1100 (June 23, 2010, 12:03 PM)
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Very eloquently stated!
The rule of software development.
You can have it:
Fast
Cheap
Right
Choose only two
Deozaan:
has an overall reliability of .9550, or barely 8%!
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-Paul Keith (June 22, 2010, 12:54 AM)
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In what world is 0.9550 == 8%?
0.955 is actually better than 95%. It's 95.5%, whereas 8% is 0.08.
Or am I missing something really obvious here?
mwb1100:
In what world is 0.9550 == 8%?
-Deozaan (June 23, 2010, 01:58 PM)
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The formatting might be messed up in some browsers - the number isn't 0.9550, it's 0.95 raised to the 50th power (expressed in some programming languages as "0.95^50" or "0.95**50" or "pow(0.95, 50)").
Paul Keith:
It's not the browser, I didn't know how to format that quote so that DonationCoder would show the correct quote so I just left the text in with the hope that people will visit the source link anyway.
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