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Akin's rules for spacecraft design [0] include: "Any exploration program which "just happens" to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle pro
by tlb 9y ago
Akin's rules for spacecraft design [0] include: "Any exploration program which "just happens" to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program."
By analogy, any software project that includes writing a database is, de facto, a database project.
[0] http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html
- yash1th 9y agoThe analogy is amazing
- dang 9y agoSince this obviously inspired https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16996306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16996306, I'm going to move the spacecraft replies to that thread. The database replies can stay here. Beautiful analogy tlb.
- Strom 9y agoAnother common version of this is: video game project turning into a video game engine project, usually not even reaching the actual content phase.
- k__ 9y agoBut weren't such projects rather common?
- sametmax 9y ago20 years ago, when much less things were expected from engines and graphics alike. It's like a web framework. Coding one when CGI came out was way less work than now. If you want to match what django or rails does now, it takes years. I read somewhere it would cost millions if you tried to hire dev to recode django at today's market rate.
- jcalabro 9y agoWhile these tools such as django and rails or Unreal and Unity are excellent achievements, we'll never get even better tooling if really smart people aren't working on these sorts of projects. I follow a project called Handmade Hero[0] by a longtime game and game tooling programmer where he codes a complete game from scratch with absolutely zero dependencies except Windows. It's an excellent educational resource and I've learned a lot about how games work, including game engines such as Unreal of Unity. This has enhanced my knowledge of how I might better use those engines and I feel that it's been a valuable use of my time. [0] https://handmadehero.org/ https://handmadehero.org/
- fwsgonzo 9y agoThat is definitely a common thing in the gamedev world.
- lukaslalinsky 9y agoAny software project that needs a custom database most likely is a database project anyway. In such cases, it's often more realistic to write a new database than is it to hack an existing one. And these days you have many good options for low level storage.
- pzone 9y agoAnd OneNote would be happily qualified as a database project even without the truism. The whole point of the thing is to quickly and consistently synchronize multimedia notes across computers.
- meepmorp 9y agoThank you for this.
- jrcii 9y ago"Ipso facto" would have been a more appropriate phrase here