4 ms·

“The Silicon Valley guys seem to have the attention span of 3-year-olds.”

GauntletWizard 11y ago
It's a bit easier to be blasé about testing when your worst-case-scenario is that somebody misses a ride, vs when you kill ~150 people. The rapid cycle of innovation is a tradeoff that SV is able to make (and finds amazingly beneficial) because we're working with soft tools and have backups of our data. I'm certain that were human life so cheap, Pratt and Whitney would have a much shorter dev cycle, too.
- kelvin0 11y ago
  Curiously, I read that comment as saying: Silicon Valley is too preoccupied with short term profits to be able to concentrate for a long time and come up with such 'tangible' and actual benefits in the domain of transportation. This is not the next 'snapchat/tumblr/facebook' ... That's how I interpreted his comment at least.
- onion2k 11y ago
  Shorter project sprints came about to try to fix the problem of project failure. Failure to create a loop that feeds discoveries in to a project's knowledge, and to communicate knowledge between teams is exactly what makes projects come to catastrophic ends, and that's what the shorter cycle time attempts to correct. The fact the product benefits from faster innovation is a function of more efficiently sharing knowledge and data, not spending less time on individual components. Designing and testing an engine can be done in an agile style. There's nothing intrinsically "software only" about the methodology. NB: I ran a startup that made software to manage requirements in big projects. I've spent lots of time thinking about different ways to manage things. Including how not to, but that was after we failed.
  - ams6110 11y ago
    Yes it is intrinsically software-only. When a software test fails you fix the bug and run it again. When a jet engine test fails you just blew up a $10M prototype.
    - onion2k 11y ago
      A software test is equivalent to a testing small part in an engine design. The cost of failure is low. The cost of a full production test in an engine design is clear, but it's the equivalent of a product handover and acceptance testing in software. The cost of failing that test could well run to millions of dollars. The only difference for a SaaS startup is that they're their own customer for product development (in the sense that they build and test in-house rather than someone else paying them to build a product). The cost of failure is still there, it's not measured.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
  It's also a very different mindset. I moved from a long career designing software for Medical Devices to desktop S/W and the hardest part for me is getting used to a much more relaxed approach to development process, documentation and testing. It's weird when I realize I can just push something out the door and not have to wait for the reams of paperwork to be complete.
- pbowyer 11y ago
  > I'm certain that were human life so cheap, Pratt and Whitney would have a much shorter dev cycle, too. I read a book recently about the history of Supermarine, and what jumped out was the attrition rate of their test pilots. Ditto for the post-war British jet industry. There is a trade-off point between safety and fast development, but I'm glad we've moved to the side of safety.
bediger4000 11y ago
Or it could be that the FAA and other airline regulatory bodies around the world (especially in UK and Europe) keep innovations from happening, and so development times can be long.
- astrodust 11y ago
  If we could distribute a new gear design which fixes flaws in some over-the-air patch it'd be a lot easier to iterate and improve. Selling thousands of engines too soon and realizing they all suffered from a critical engineering issue could bankrupt your company. There's a lot on the line!
  - kenko 11y ago
    Bankrupt your company, and probably do some serious damage to the airlines or plane manufacturers that bought them from you, and also kill a lot of people. But, you know, move fast!
- Scuds 11y ago
  You can have an idea, but getting it into production, especially if the entire design hinges around it, is an entirely different story. From the article, the new engine is to wide to fit a number of existing planes.
hinkley 11y ago
Yeah I don't think this is an argument the aerospace industry can win. To whatever degree SV lacks patience, the airplane industry has the opposite problem. Tolerance of needless complexity leads to expensive systems that aren't necessarily any better for it. There's a real sense that design has absolutely no place and every problem can be engineered around, even if it takes two more layers of parts to achieve it. Not only that, they have a bad habit of adopting disproven solutions simply because they 'are mature'. That is I believe Musk's premise with his rocketry division. It couldn't possibly be this complicated, can it? I hope he turns out to be right. But if he is, gonna be a lot of smug engineers having to take early retirement.
- hyperbovine 11y ago
  > That is I believe Musk's premise with his rocketry division. One hull loss per nineteen attempts is not an acceptable failure rate for "the airplane industry", is it? It's difficult for me to put into words the level of respect and admiration I have for the risk-averse, plodding, and methodical aerospace culture that has created modern aviation. (Seriously, have you ever considered the absolute miracle of engineering that is a modern jetliner?) To lump that profession under the same rubric of engineering as the one where a bunch of overcaffeinated "disruptors" write software to get people to click on ads seems... unjust, to put it mildly.
  - hinkley 11y ago
    You can't compare a giant pipe bomb with passengers on one end to an airplane either, but I'm the one who opened that door without a suitable qualifier, so that's on me. What I meant to convey is that I expect someone to do to commercial aviation what Musk is trying to do to rocketry, and what I expect that to look like is for more effort to be placed into reducing single points of failure by designing complementary systems instead of just putting three of everything on the vehicle and then adding two more layers of stuff to manage it. And also for them to act like progress in software development processes actually applies to them now instead of in thirty years. We got no end of grief for refusing to do pure waterfall, and they were conspicuously silent when we're were able to fix fundamental up front design flaws in 3-8 weeks, and without doing a reenactment of Macbeth starring William Shatner, set in a rehab clinic. Then again, I expect something to happen to improve the caliber of software developers out there as well, so we'll see how that goes. Often when I expound on the qualities of my profession I am intentionally and consciously imagining that the 30% of my peers that are responsible for 70% of our problems either don't exist, or are off doing something that's not important.

It's a bit easier to be blasé about testing when your worst-case-scenario is that somebody misses a ride, vs when you kill ~150 people. The rapid cycle of innovation is a tradeoff that SV is able to make (and finds amazingly beneficial) because we're working with soft tools and have backups of our data. I'm certain that were human life so cheap, Pratt and Whitney would have a much shorter dev cycle, too.

kelvin0 11y ago
Curiously, I read that comment as saying: Silicon Valley is too preoccupied with short term profits to be able to concentrate for a long time and come up with such 'tangible' and actual benefits in the domain of transportation. This is not the next 'snapchat/tumblr/facebook' ... That's how I interpreted his comment at least.
onion2k 11y ago
Shorter project sprints came about to try to fix the problem of project failure. Failure to create a loop that feeds discoveries in to a project's knowledge, and to communicate knowledge between teams is exactly what makes projects come to catastrophic ends, and that's what the shorter cycle time attempts to correct. The fact the product benefits from faster innovation is a function of more efficiently sharing knowledge and data, not spending less time on individual components. Designing and testing an engine can be done in an agile style. There's nothing intrinsically "software only" about the methodology. NB: I ran a startup that made software to manage requirements in big projects. I've spent lots of time thinking about different ways to manage things. Including how not to, but that was after we failed.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Yes it is intrinsically software-only. When a software test fails you fix the bug and run it again. When a jet engine test fails you just blew up a $10M prototype.
  - onion2k 11y ago
    A software test is equivalent to a testing small part in an engine design. The cost of failure is low. The cost of a full production test in an engine design is clear, but it's the equivalent of a product handover and acceptance testing in software. The cost of failing that test could well run to millions of dollars. The only difference for a SaaS startup is that they're their own customer for product development (in the sense that they build and test in-house rather than someone else paying them to build a product). The cost of failure is still there, it's not measured.
HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
It's also a very different mindset. I moved from a long career designing software for Medical Devices to desktop S/W and the hardest part for me is getting used to a much more relaxed approach to development process, documentation and testing. It's weird when I realize I can just push something out the door and not have to wait for the reams of paperwork to be complete.
pbowyer 11y ago
> I'm certain that were human life so cheap, Pratt and Whitney would have a much shorter dev cycle, too. I read a book recently about the history of Supermarine, and what jumped out was the attrition rate of their test pilots. Ditto for the post-war British jet industry. There is a trade-off point between safety and fast development, but I'm glad we've moved to the side of safety.

bediger4000 11y ago

Or it could be that the FAA and other airline regulatory bodies around the world (especially in UK and Europe) keep innovations from happening, and so development times can be long.

astrodust 11y ago
If we could distribute a new gear design which fixes flaws in some over-the-air patch it'd be a lot easier to iterate and improve. Selling thousands of engines too soon and realizing they all suffered from a critical engineering issue could bankrupt your company. There's a lot on the line!
- kenko 11y ago
  Bankrupt your company, and probably do some serious damage to the airlines or plane manufacturers that bought them from you, and also kill a lot of people. But, you know, move fast!
Scuds 11y ago
You can have an idea, but getting it into production, especially if the entire design hinges around it, is an entirely different story. From the article, the new engine is to wide to fit a number of existing planes.

hinkley 11y ago

Yeah I don't think this is an argument the aerospace industry can win. To whatever degree SV lacks patience, the airplane industry has the opposite problem. Tolerance of needless complexity leads to expensive systems that aren't necessarily any better for it. There's a real sense that design has absolutely no place and every problem can be engineered around, even if it takes two more layers of parts to achieve it. Not only that, they have a bad habit of adopting disproven solutions simply because they 'are mature'. That is I believe Musk's premise with his rocketry division. It couldn't possibly be this complicated, can it? I hope he turns out to be right. But if he is, gonna be a lot of smug engineers having to take early retirement.

hyperbovine 11y ago
> That is I believe Musk's premise with his rocketry division. One hull loss per nineteen attempts is not an acceptable failure rate for "the airplane industry", is it? It's difficult for me to put into words the level of respect and admiration I have for the risk-averse, plodding, and methodical aerospace culture that has created modern aviation. (Seriously, have you ever considered the absolute miracle of engineering that is a modern jetliner?) To lump that profession under the same rubric of engineering as the one where a bunch of overcaffeinated "disruptors" write software to get people to click on ads seems... unjust, to put it mildly.
- hinkley 11y ago
  You can't compare a giant pipe bomb with passengers on one end to an airplane either, but I'm the one who opened that door without a suitable qualifier, so that's on me. What I meant to convey is that I expect someone to do to commercial aviation what Musk is trying to do to rocketry, and what I expect that to look like is for more effort to be placed into reducing single points of failure by designing complementary systems instead of just putting three of everything on the vehicle and then adding two more layers of stuff to manage it. And also for them to act like progress in software development processes actually applies to them now instead of in thirty years. We got no end of grief for refusing to do pure waterfall, and they were conspicuously silent when we're were able to fix fundamental up front design flaws in 3-8 weeks, and without doing a reenactment of Macbeth starring William Shatner, set in a rehab clinic. Then again, I expect something to happen to improve the caliber of software developers out there as well, so we'll see how that goes. Often when I expound on the qualities of my profession I am intentionally and consciously imagining that the 30% of my peers that are responsible for 70% of our problems either don't exist, or are off doing something that's not important.