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That link is easily the greatest thing I've seen on HN. Thank you Until 42, that was a buzzkill
by aje403 8y ago
That link is easily the greatest thing I've seen on HN. Thank you
Until 42, that was a buzzkill
- msla 8y agoI find 31 a bigger buzzkill: > (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees. There's no gradual path to some goals. It's annoying beyond belief to only know something well enough to solve toy problems, and not have any way to see how you can extend your knowledge so you can solve non-toy problems. Sometimes, you can't get there from here.
- rm_-rf_slash 8y agoI read it as the other way. Acknowledging that iterative improvements on fixed assumptions goes nowhere is quite liberating. Perhaps I have been watching too much Gurren Lagann lately, but my corollary to rule 31 would be: if you are underground, you can only find sunlight by digging up.
- tlb 8y agoBut you can get to the moon starting with hand-made shoestring-budget rockets like Goddard's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rockets#/media/File:Goddard_and_Rocket.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rockets#/media/File....
- SahAssar 8y agoActually that image perfectly represents the concept. To get to the moon they had to abandon puller rockets (like the one in the image), and use pusher rockets instead. That isn't just a higher tree, that's completely re-imagining the way a rocket works. So "higher trees" might be a good way to learn how to re-engineer the idea so that you can get to the moon.
- sbov 8y agoSometimes I feel like software developers are using rockets to climb trees.
- bartread 8y agoThere's a lot of fantastic nuggets in there, that's for sure, but I have a nasty feeling that in a few years time this one will have become firmly entrenched in the vile lexicon of management wank-speak: 31. (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.
- hinkley 8y agoHeard this one as “you can’t cross the Grand Canyon in Three Easy Steps”
- staticautomatic 8y agoThat one's gonna be the new "revolution vs evolution".
- callmeal 8y agoI think there already is: You can't run a marathon in sprints.
- perl4ever 8y agoI heard something similar from people who worked on Navy subs - an engineering assistant fresh out of college was told "you may have gotten partial credit in school, but a sailor at the bottom of the ocean doesn't care if you did your work partly right".
- hinkley 8y agoGod I started saying that one pretty early. I may have still been in college when I started saying it. Working while going to school is a very different experience than doing them in order.