3 ms·

> But the people who design and build bridges, they're great at it. Bridges get built on time, on budget, and last for dozens, hundreds, even thousands of years

> But the people who design and build bridges, they're great at it. Bridges get built on time, on budget, and last for dozens, hundreds, even thousands of years. Bridge building is, if you think about it, kind of awesome. And bridges are such a common occurrence that they’re also incredibly boring. No one is amazed when a bridge works correctly, and everyone is kind of amazed when software does. Emphasis mine was added by me. Sorry, source needed. You're a software developer, not a bridge builder. Yes, bridges in my country seem to work, fair enough. But I have the faintest clue if the design/building process really is going that smoothly. To write this down as a fact to build your argument is IMO a pretty big assumption.

buster 6y ago
Especially if you consider the state in which some infrastructure is around the world. I'm impressed to see the occasional aqueduct from 2000 years ago in Europe, but i also see the occasional modern bridge collapsing in the same country (https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/26/what-caused-the-genoa-morandi-bridge-collapse-and-the-end-of-an-italian-national-myth https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/26/what-caused-t...). From what I've heard and seen, infrastructure in the US (roads, bridges) isn't exactly the example for "build once, use for thousands of years". And that's not even considering how many of those road or bridge building projects really are in time and budget.
mplanchard 6y ago
I agree with this. I live in Austin, TX, and we’ve constantly got five to ten big construction projects going, both in the private sector (new buildings) and the public sector (usually roads and other transportation infrastructure). It’s certainly possible I just haven’t been paying good enough attention, but it seems like the vast majority of such projects that have been completed over the last six years have been over budget and behind schedule.
encloser 6y ago
I am a US citizen with a bunch of civil engineer friends who are Professional Engineers (the capital letter, licensed kind). For a good number of years I had a roommate whose job was literally designing bridges. We've talked about this very comparison. Bridge building is not as boring as this author thinks. It can be pretty stressful. There are a few factors that make bridges very reliable (but not perfect) in the US. A real engineer can probably describe this far better than I can. 1) Physics and material science are pretty well known quantities. There is innovation and new materials come to market, but by the time they are approved to be used in real bridges their qualities are fairly well known and tested. They have solid evidence of the capabilities of a material or part. (Tensile strength of an item under various environmental conditions, for example). 2) Standards & Very Firm Requirements (Where waterfall works!) They have a set of strict approved industry standards to rely upon. Not the "industry standard by convention" kind that you see around IT a lot, but the "tested, reviewed, approved, published by a standards body" kind. When a civil engineer is assigned to build a specific bridge they reference these standards that tell them "given this type of ground do this", "given this length of span do that". They know the lengths and widths, they check the traffic patterns, they know the desired weight limits. Challenges do come up, yet they have fewer unknown unknowns. Something changed from their expectations, maybe the ground is different than expected, but they still have standards that guide them in what to do in those cases. 3) Reviews, reviews, reviews. Other Professional Engineers have to sign off on the work of the initial designer(s). Deep reviews. Not what typically passes for software architecture and code reviews I've seen. 4) Legal responsibility. Professional Engineers have an amount of personal accountability at stake because real lives are at stake if something fails. 5) "User" common sense and intuition Nobody builds a 100,000 ton vehicle and then tries to drive it over a bridge. Most any human that thought about doing this can probably reason that doing so would break the bridge. In my experience software users have no idea that trying to push a 1TB file into a system that was designed to only handle 1MB files will cause it to fail. They often have no idea when their data volume increases. "I'm doing the same thing I did last month!" All that and more, yet bridges still go over budget and over time and fail and people die.
Jaxan 6y ago
Many bridges have collapsed in Italy recently. So, yeah, they do not always last hundred years...

buster 6y ago

Especially if you consider the state in which some infrastructure is around the world. I'm impressed to see the occasional aqueduct from 2000 years ago in Europe, but i also see the occasional modern bridge collapsing in the same country (https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/26/what-caused-the-genoa-morandi-bridge-collapse-and-the-end-of-an-italian-national-myth https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/26/what-caused-t...). From what I've heard and seen, infrastructure in the US (roads, bridges) isn't exactly the example for "build once, use for thousands of years". And that's not even considering how many of those road or bridge building projects really are in time and budget.

mplanchard 6y ago

I agree with this. I live in Austin, TX, and we’ve constantly got five to ten big construction projects going, both in the private sector (new buildings) and the public sector (usually roads and other transportation infrastructure). It’s certainly possible I just haven’t been paying good enough attention, but it seems like the vast majority of such projects that have been completed over the last six years have been over budget and behind schedule.

encloser 6y ago

I am a US citizen with a bunch of civil engineer friends who are Professional Engineers (the capital letter, licensed kind). For a good number of years I had a roommate whose job was literally designing bridges. We've talked about this very comparison. Bridge building is not as boring as this author thinks. It can be pretty stressful. There are a few factors that make bridges very reliable (but not perfect) in the US. A real engineer can probably describe this far better than I can. 1) Physics and material science are pretty well known quantities. There is innovation and new materials come to market, but by the time they are approved to be used in real bridges their qualities are fairly well known and tested. They have solid evidence of the capabilities of a material or part. (Tensile strength of an item under various environmental conditions, for example). 2) Standards & Very Firm Requirements (Where waterfall works!) They have a set of strict approved industry standards to rely upon. Not the "industry standard by convention" kind that you see around IT a lot, but the "tested, reviewed, approved, published by a standards body" kind. When a civil engineer is assigned to build a specific bridge they reference these standards that tell them "given this type of ground do this", "given this length of span do that". They know the lengths and widths, they check the traffic patterns, they know the desired weight limits. Challenges do come up, yet they have fewer unknown unknowns. Something changed from their expectations, maybe the ground is different than expected, but they still have standards that guide them in what to do in those cases. 3) Reviews, reviews, reviews. Other Professional Engineers have to sign off on the work of the initial designer(s). Deep reviews. Not what typically passes for software architecture and code reviews I've seen. 4) Legal responsibility. Professional Engineers have an amount of personal accountability at stake because real lives are at stake if something fails. 5) "User" common sense and intuition Nobody builds a 100,000 ton vehicle and then tries to drive it over a bridge. Most any human that thought about doing this can probably reason that doing so would break the bridge. In my experience software users have no idea that trying to push a 1TB file into a system that was designed to only handle 1MB files will cause it to fail. They often have no idea when their data volume increases. "I'm doing the same thing I did last month!" All that and more, yet bridges still go over budget and over time and fail and people die.

Jaxan 6y ago

Many bridges have collapsed in Italy recently. So, yeah, they do not always last hundred years...