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The "fast project page" this links to is pretty interesting: https://patrickcollison.com/fast https://patrickcollison.com/fast > The Empire State Building. Con

The "fast project page" this links to is pretty interesting: https://patrickcollison.com/fast https://patrickcollison.com/fast > The Empire State Building. Construction was started and finished in 410 days. > Unix. Ken Thompson wrote the first version in three weeks. > Git. Linus Torvalds started working on Git on April 3 2005. It was self-hosting 4 days later. Inspiring.

MontyCarloHall 7y ago
But also sobering: >San Francisco proposed a new bus lane on Van Ness in 2001. Its opening was recently delayed to 2021, yielding a project duration of around 7,300 days. “The project has been delayed due to an increase of wet weather since the project started,” said Paul Rose, a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson. The project will cost $310 million, i.e. $100,000 per meter. The Alaska Highway, mentioned above, constructed across remote tundra, cost $793 per meter in 2019 dollars.
- _tulpa 7y ago
  > The Alaska Highway, mentioned above, constructed across remote tundra, cost $793 per meter in 2019 dollars. 'the "highway" was not usable by general vehicles until 1943. Even then there were many steep grades, a poor surface, switchbacks to gain and descend hills ...' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Highway#Construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Highway#Construction) plus bridges which were temporary, impassable sections in 1943 when stuff started to melt, etc, etc ,etc. A war-time dirt-road constructed by the army and only traversable by stuff that could probably go off-road anyway is not really the same as building something in an existing city which has to support regular bus traffic.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  Yes, that's bad. Do keep in mind, though, that in quite a few places the Alaska Highway was just tundra. It was built in wartime (WW2) to get a land supply route to bases in Alaska as fast as possible. The intended use case was a convoy of military trucks with a engineers and repair gear who could fix the road as they travelled along it. Impressive, but different from a modern highway.
- jsjohnst 7y ago
  Didn’t check the link to see if it’s listed, but another one would be the Second Ave “T” subway line in NYC. Originally started in ~1931, now it’s finally got a few sections built (part of the “Q” line now).
dang 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848860
jsjohnst 7y ago
JavaScript was created in about two weeks as the legend tells it.

MontyCarloHall 7y ago

But also sobering: >San Francisco proposed a new bus lane on Van Ness in 2001. Its opening was recently delayed to 2021, yielding a project duration of around 7,300 days. “The project has been delayed due to an increase of wet weather since the project started,” said Paul Rose, a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson. The project will cost $310 million, i.e. $100,000 per meter. The Alaska Highway, mentioned above, constructed across remote tundra, cost $793 per meter in 2019 dollars.

_tulpa 7y ago
> The Alaska Highway, mentioned above, constructed across remote tundra, cost $793 per meter in 2019 dollars. 'the "highway" was not usable by general vehicles until 1943. Even then there were many steep grades, a poor surface, switchbacks to gain and descend hills ...' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Highway#Construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Highway#Construction) plus bridges which were temporary, impassable sections in 1943 when stuff started to melt, etc, etc ,etc. A war-time dirt-road constructed by the army and only traversable by stuff that could probably go off-road anyway is not really the same as building something in an existing city which has to support regular bus traffic.
iudqnolq 7y ago
Yes, that's bad. Do keep in mind, though, that in quite a few places the Alaska Highway was just tundra. It was built in wartime (WW2) to get a land supply route to bases in Alaska as fast as possible. The intended use case was a convoy of military trucks with a engineers and repair gear who could fix the road as they travelled along it. Impressive, but different from a modern highway.
jsjohnst 7y ago
Didn’t check the link to see if it’s listed, but another one would be the Second Ave “T” subway line in NYC. Originally started in ~1931, now it’s finally got a few sections built (part of the “Q” line now).

dang 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848860

jsjohnst 7y ago

JavaScript was created in about two weeks as the legend tells it.