9 ms·

> "The precision of keeping all those threads perfectly spaced is one thing" > Making the first precision screw requires a "screw originating machine".[1][2] T

by vageli 7y ago

> "The precision of keeping all those threads perfectly spaced is one thing" > Making the first precision screw requires a "screw originating machine".[1][2] This is a special-purpose device which can make a better screw than the ones used in building it. I hadn't realized screws would be needed to create a screw-making machine. I love that we have machines that make better versions of their own components, something I never even thought to think of!

indenturedsmile 7y ago
I don't have a source, and maybe I'm misremembering, but I think compilers (for software) and CPU production tooling (for hardware) both bootstrap off their own performance. A better compiler can compile itself more efficiently, same for CPU/chip layout systems.
- tomstuart 7y ago
  You’re exactly right about this. Of course compilers which compile themselves come with their own risks! https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358210 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358210
  - dllthomas 7y ago
    Risks which can be ameliorated: https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust
- richev 7y ago
  The original version of the C# compiler was written in C and C++, but today's version is indeed itself written in C#! https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27513234/in-which-language-is-the-c-sharp-compiler-written https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27513234/in-which-langua...
  - hermitdev 7y ago
    Often, the first bootstrapped is the bare minimum to get basic functionality available, to then build upon what features you can support. Its been a while, and I think it was gcc 7.x timeframe, and IIRC, you had to have at a min, gcc 4.x available to bootstrap, and it took something like 3 separate bootstrap iterations to get the final compilers was like 4-6 hours if memory serves.
- erklik 7y ago
  > compilers Absolutely. Otherwise, all compilers would be written in Assmebly. Most compilers used today are written in C and the compiler for C (GCC) is written in C itself. The C language was also written by Ken Thomson, because he was unhappy with the BCPL language, so the compiler for C was originally written in B. So on and So forth. More Recently, the initial compiler for Rust was written in OCaml but is now written in Rust itself.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    Slight nit: GCC has been written in C++ (not C) for several years now.
- Vi0 7y ago
  This is accurate, but compiler runtime efficiency and compiler effectiveness at producing efficient programs are inherently orthogonal. There is certainly a major milestone in each new language though, when it becomes feature complete enough to write its own compiler.
analog31 7y ago
Amusingly, most commercial screws today are made with rolled threads, where the wire is rolled between two ridged dies. But making those dies is a pretty high technology in its own right. The use of screw machines is now limited to making specialized or super-precision parts.
grogenaut 7y ago
This is kinda inherent in everything, our tech generally moves upwards based on iterations of improvements. Even cheap mass production shitty stuff is still an improvement. Or do you mean exactly screws? Really when you get down to it, like computers, tools are used like 30+% of the time to build other better tools. Jigs, more accurate cutters, measurement devices, etc. With code that's things like test frameworks, rpc mechanisms, version control, code gen, etc. In fact in software engineering you're usually seen as a better engineer if you build things indirectly (frameworks) instead of mass production of the solution. Check out the home machine shop series to see how you'd build up a tech stack from basically scrap metal and wood and Sand. The Metal Lathe (Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap Series Book 2) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007USU8HU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GhtlDbT0S827Z https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007USU8HU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Gh... The lathe is pretty much the ur-machine, and a lathe is really just screws
- nadavr 7y ago
  There is an old Jewish tradition (written down in Pirkei Avot ~1700 years ago) which lists the objects that God created "on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight" after finishing the rest of creation. Most of them are religious or mystical in meaning, but the final object listed is "[the original] tongs, for tongs are made with tongs." here's a link to the text https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.5.6?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.5.6?lang=bi&with=all&lan...
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    That's really interesting. The Tanakh never mentions an "evening and morning" for the Sabbath, unlike the first 6 days.
    - ijidak 7y ago
      Good catch. That's because we're still on the 7th day according to the Tanakh. The form of the verb translated that God "rested" is in fact progressive in the original Hebrew. https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2011525 https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2011525
dreamcompiler 7y ago
I spent many years building a database backend from scratch. Right from the beginning, you need a fast way to look up a file address given a simple key, and that mechanism needs to be persistent. Thus to build a database you first need ... a database. Bootstrapping this thing was tricky.
dd36 7y ago
The Technium is a superorganism.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Which is incidentally yet another reason why it's very important to ensure stability of our technological civilization. We've pulled ourselves by the straps of our boots a couple hundred meters into air now; it's not safe to stop pulling. Given big enough shock to economies and populations, we'll regress not a decade or three, but all the way to the beginning of industrial revolution - you can't build the technology we have now from scratch, as it's full of cyclical dependencies. It would need to be rebooted from scratch.
- monktastic1 7y ago
  This is one of the most fascinating things I've read on this site. Do you know of any resources that go into this in more detail?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    See resources around the thread about precision manufacturing. Consider how Industrial Revolution started thanks to easy access to high-density energy sources like coal, and how we've mined and burned pretty much everything that's accessible by hand. Observe how modern mining requires huge amounts of energy and sophisticated technology. It's all intertwined. Consider also the amount of people needed all across the industries and supply chains of any product you know. I don't have hard sources, but I fondly remember this essay by Charles Stross[0]. TL;DR: how many people does it take to maintain (not improve) current technology level of our civilization? Charlie puts it at 100 million to 1 billion. And now think of the economies and infrastructure needed to just feed these people. We hit 1 billion around 1804[1], which is far in the industrialization process, and most of these people weren't working to support the technology levels anyway. For some insights, I recommend tracking down and watching Connections[2]. It's an old show, from the era where TV shows actually made sense, and it drives home just how much our current technology is dependent on right combinations of social, economical and technological conditions. EDIT: fixed site reference in [2]. -- [0] - http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insuffic... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series); I hear you can find it on a site that starts with "daily", and ends with "motion.com".
abdullahkhalids 7y ago
> I love that we have machines that make better versions of their own components, something I never even thought to think of! This is how compilers for example are made. You initially compile the improved source code of a compiler on the previous version. I wonder if there is an ancestry trees (or I guess chains) somewhere of the major compilers out there?
pontifier 7y ago
I heard an interesting anecdote about screw manufacturing. A friend of mine was in china talking to manufacturers there. He asked about standard screw sizes and was told that there were no standard sizes or "in stock", and he should just tell them what size he wanted because their supplier just makes whatever size screws they need.

by vageli 7y ago

indenturedsmile 7y ago

I don't have a source, and maybe I'm misremembering, but I think compilers (for software) and CPU production tooling (for hardware) both bootstrap off their own performance. A better compiler can compile itself more efficiently, same for CPU/chip layout systems.

tomstuart 7y ago
You’re exactly right about this. Of course compilers which compile themselves come with their own risks! https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358210 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358210
- dllthomas 7y ago
  Risks which can be ameliorated: https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust https://dwheeler.com/trusting-trust
richev 7y ago
The original version of the C# compiler was written in C and C++, but today's version is indeed itself written in C#! https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27513234/in-which-language-is-the-c-sharp-compiler-written https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27513234/in-which-langua...
- hermitdev 7y ago
  Often, the first bootstrapped is the bare minimum to get basic functionality available, to then build upon what features you can support. Its been a while, and I think it was gcc 7.x timeframe, and IIRC, you had to have at a min, gcc 4.x available to bootstrap, and it took something like 3 separate bootstrap iterations to get the final compilers was like 4-6 hours if memory serves.
erklik 7y ago
> compilers Absolutely. Otherwise, all compilers would be written in Assmebly. Most compilers used today are written in C and the compiler for C (GCC) is written in C itself. The C language was also written by Ken Thomson, because he was unhappy with the BCPL language, so the compiler for C was originally written in B. So on and So forth. More Recently, the initial compiler for Rust was written in OCaml but is now written in Rust itself.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Slight nit: GCC has been written in C++ (not C) for several years now.
Vi0 7y ago
This is accurate, but compiler runtime efficiency and compiler effectiveness at producing efficient programs are inherently orthogonal. There is certainly a major milestone in each new language though, when it becomes feature complete enough to write its own compiler.

analog31 7y ago

Amusingly, most commercial screws today are made with rolled threads, where the wire is rolled between two ridged dies. But making those dies is a pretty high technology in its own right. The use of screw machines is now limited to making specialized or super-precision parts.

grogenaut 7y ago

This is kinda inherent in everything, our tech generally moves upwards based on iterations of improvements. Even cheap mass production shitty stuff is still an improvement. Or do you mean exactly screws? Really when you get down to it, like computers, tools are used like 30+% of the time to build other better tools. Jigs, more accurate cutters, measurement devices, etc. With code that's things like test frameworks, rpc mechanisms, version control, code gen, etc. In fact in software engineering you're usually seen as a better engineer if you build things indirectly (frameworks) instead of mass production of the solution. Check out the home machine shop series to see how you'd build up a tech stack from basically scrap metal and wood and Sand. The Metal Lathe (Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap Series Book 2) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007USU8HU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GhtlDbT0S827Z https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007USU8HU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Gh... The lathe is pretty much the ur-machine, and a lathe is really just screws

nadavr 7y ago
There is an old Jewish tradition (written down in Pirkei Avot ~1700 years ago) which lists the objects that God created "on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight" after finishing the rest of creation. Most of them are religious or mystical in meaning, but the final object listed is "[the original] tongs, for tongs are made with tongs." here's a link to the text https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.5.6?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.5.6?lang=bi&with=all&lan...
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  That's really interesting. The Tanakh never mentions an "evening and morning" for the Sabbath, unlike the first 6 days.
  - ijidak 7y ago
    Good catch. That's because we're still on the 7th day according to the Tanakh. The form of the verb translated that God "rested" is in fact progressive in the original Hebrew. https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2011525 https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2011525

dreamcompiler 7y ago

I spent many years building a database backend from scratch. Right from the beginning, you need a fast way to look up a file address given a simple key, and that mechanism needs to be persistent. Thus to build a database you first need ... a database. Bootstrapping this thing was tricky.

dd36 7y ago

The Technium is a superorganism.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Which is incidentally yet another reason why it's very important to ensure stability of our technological civilization. We've pulled ourselves by the straps of our boots a couple hundred meters into air now; it's not safe to stop pulling. Given big enough shock to economies and populations, we'll regress not a decade or three, but all the way to the beginning of industrial revolution - you can't build the technology we have now from scratch, as it's full of cyclical dependencies. It would need to be rebooted from scratch.

monktastic1 7y ago
This is one of the most fascinating things I've read on this site. Do you know of any resources that go into this in more detail?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  See resources around the thread about precision manufacturing. Consider how Industrial Revolution started thanks to easy access to high-density energy sources like coal, and how we've mined and burned pretty much everything that's accessible by hand. Observe how modern mining requires huge amounts of energy and sophisticated technology. It's all intertwined. Consider also the amount of people needed all across the industries and supply chains of any product you know. I don't have hard sources, but I fondly remember this essay by Charles Stross[0]. TL;DR: how many people does it take to maintain (not improve) current technology level of our civilization? Charlie puts it at 100 million to 1 billion. And now think of the economies and infrastructure needed to just feed these people. We hit 1 billion around 1804[1], which is far in the industrialization process, and most of these people weren't working to support the technology levels anyway. For some insights, I recommend tracking down and watching Connections[2]. It's an old show, from the era where TV shows actually made sense, and it drives home just how much our current technology is dependent on right combinations of social, economical and technological conditions. EDIT: fixed site reference in [2]. -- [0] - http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insuffic... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series); I hear you can find it on a site that starts with "daily", and ends with "motion.com".

abdullahkhalids 7y ago

> I love that we have machines that make better versions of their own components, something I never even thought to think of! This is how compilers for example are made. You initially compile the improved source code of a compiler on the previous version. I wonder if there is an ancestry trees (or I guess chains) somewhere of the major compilers out there?

pontifier 7y ago

I heard an interesting anecdote about screw manufacturing. A friend of mine was in china talking to manufacturers there. He asked about standard screw sizes and was told that there were no standard sizes or "in stock", and he should just tell them what size he wanted because their supplier just makes whatever size screws they need.