4 ms·

And noone bat an eye. Programming is not an engineering discipline.

by aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

R0b0t1 5y ago
Do you think the mechanical side of a car is any better? Stuff routinely fails in weird "unforeseen" ways.
- Arainach 5y ago
  "Wait 8 months and your car will start working again" has never been an acceptable answer for the mechanical side. It's not an acceptable answer for the digital side either, but that doesn't stop teams from trying to use it.
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    If it was actually a severe issue, I'm sure there are ways to deploy a fix. But the cost-benefit is clearly not there for this kind of meh issue. Bad PR is the main downside here.
    - superfrank 5y ago
      Exactly. The person you're responding to is mixing business and engineering decisions. There's always a fix, it might just be expensive. If this was a critical safety issue that had the ability to kill tens of thousands of people and cost the company billions of dollars, teams would work night and day to rewrite the code and they would bring the cars in and replace the navigation systems with ones that work. But this isn't a critical issue... Someone has done a cost benefit analysis and decided it's cheaper to just tell people to wait until August and make whole any customer who throws a fit about it. There's "no solution" because no solution is cheaper than the actual solution to the problem. <insert Fight Club quote here>
  - nexuist 5y ago
    > "Wait 8 months and your car will start working again" has never been an acceptable answer for the mechanical side The same side that routinely totals the entire car for minor fender benders? Yeah, all software would be great if we could just tell our clients to fuck off whenever they bring in some garbage for us to fix! You want a fixed car? Go buy a new one lol! But we don't have that privilege, so this is what happens.
    - quickthrowman 5y ago
      > The same side that routinely totals the entire car for minor fender benders? Which side is that? Insurance companies total out cars based on repair value exceeding the car’s value. If you want to fork out your own cash, nobody is going to refuse to fix it.
      - nexuist 5y ago
        Right, that's how insurance companies do it because it makes sense. Have you ever heard of software systems routinely being "totaled"? And yet the expectation is for the software to be more reliable than the hardware despite years and years of tech debt.
        Spooky23 5y ago
        All. Of. The. Time. A couple of years ago I was a tech lead on a project that “totaled” a 30 year old, perfectly functional application and migrated it to a big cloud solution. Remember during COVID hearing about state unemployment systems running on obsolete mainframes? The dirty little secret there is that many states use a semi-standardized solution developed by IBM in the 80s (when the Feds spent a bunch of money to computerize unemployment insurance). The mainframe stuff is solid, the garbage bolted to it for IVR and web support 20 years ago is not. Because of that poor stewardship, the Federal government will probably spend billions over the next decade totalling those systems.
        nexuist 5y ago
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Personally, I drive around with the clock off by one hour for half the year. So as long as it is just the clock, then put me in the "I don't care" column.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    Just waiting for your car to start working is strictly an improvement. Usually your engine or drive train suffers unforeseen failure and burns up.
- userbinator 5y ago
  The science of mechanical wear is well-known and has had many more decades to mature.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    As opposed to science of counting, right?
nexuist 5y ago
I mean, who cares? Is it really that big of a deal that your date in the car is wrong? Just set the time back to what it should be and go on with your day. On the list of things to pay special attention to, I would much rather they prioritize safety and reliability.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Until you turn it off, and resets itself to the incorrect date again, despite having the auto-update feature turned off. Which what these Hondas are doing. So every time you turn the ignition, the car “corrects” its clock to the wrong date.
  - nexuist 5y ago
    While that's relatively worse, it's still a non-issue - just look at your phone if you want the current time. Nobody buys a car for its accurate timekeeping abilities. I understand that customers are rightfully pissed off that they paid for a clock and no longer have a working clock, but the cost of said clock can't have been more than a few dollars so it still doesn't really matter. In my head this would suck a lot more if the time was needed to enable more connectivity i.e. syncing calendars, remote start/unlock, etc. But if that was the case these systems would use NTP and avoid this whole mess entirely.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      That’s like the slumlord approach to property maintenance. Screen door is broken? Building Code doesn’t require it, rip the thing off! If you’re making a durable product that’s going to be around for a decade or two, make it right. This attitude that we should just shrug and accept bad “engineering” is just dumb. Honda in particular didn’t move their entertainment systems to CarPlay/Android Auto until 2018 in some models - so internally they felt there was some strategic advantage to owning the car entertainment stack, and they still fucked it up. Where else do they suck?
      - nexuist 5y ago
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
It's an engineering discipline like drug dealing is medicine, we are all keeping up a big charade.
dang 5y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29832525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29832525.

And noone bat an eye. Programming is not an engineering discipline.

R0b0t1 5y ago

Do you think the mechanical side of a car is any better? Stuff routinely fails in weird "unforeseen" ways.

Arainach 5y ago
"Wait 8 months and your car will start working again" has never been an acceptable answer for the mechanical side. It's not an acceptable answer for the digital side either, but that doesn't stop teams from trying to use it.
- whateveracct 5y ago
  If it was actually a severe issue, I'm sure there are ways to deploy a fix. But the cost-benefit is clearly not there for this kind of meh issue. Bad PR is the main downside here.
  - superfrank 5y ago
    Exactly. The person you're responding to is mixing business and engineering decisions. There's always a fix, it might just be expensive. If this was a critical safety issue that had the ability to kill tens of thousands of people and cost the company billions of dollars, teams would work night and day to rewrite the code and they would bring the cars in and replace the navigation systems with ones that work. But this isn't a critical issue... Someone has done a cost benefit analysis and decided it's cheaper to just tell people to wait until August and make whole any customer who throws a fit about it. There's "no solution" because no solution is cheaper than the actual solution to the problem. <insert Fight Club quote here>
- nexuist 5y ago
  > "Wait 8 months and your car will start working again" has never been an acceptable answer for the mechanical side The same side that routinely totals the entire car for minor fender benders? Yeah, all software would be great if we could just tell our clients to fuck off whenever they bring in some garbage for us to fix! You want a fixed car? Go buy a new one lol! But we don't have that privilege, so this is what happens.
  - quickthrowman 5y ago
    > The same side that routinely totals the entire car for minor fender benders? Which side is that? Insurance companies total out cars based on repair value exceeding the car’s value. If you want to fork out your own cash, nobody is going to refuse to fix it.
    - nexuist 5y ago
      Right, that's how insurance companies do it because it makes sense. Have you ever heard of software systems routinely being "totaled"? And yet the expectation is for the software to be more reliable than the hardware despite years and years of tech debt.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        All. Of. The. Time. A couple of years ago I was a tech lead on a project that “totaled” a 30 year old, perfectly functional application and migrated it to a big cloud solution. Remember during COVID hearing about state unemployment systems running on obsolete mainframes? The dirty little secret there is that many states use a semi-standardized solution developed by IBM in the 80s (when the Feds spent a bunch of money to computerize unemployment insurance). The mainframe stuff is solid, the garbage bolted to it for IVR and web support 20 years ago is not. Because of that poor stewardship, the Federal government will probably spend billions over the next decade totalling those systems.
        nexuist 5y ago
- dylan604 5y ago
  Personally, I drive around with the clock off by one hour for half the year. So as long as it is just the clock, then put me in the "I don't care" column.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Just waiting for your car to start working is strictly an improvement. Usually your engine or drive train suffers unforeseen failure and burns up.
userbinator 5y ago
The science of mechanical wear is well-known and has had many more decades to mature.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  As opposed to science of counting, right?

nexuist 5y ago

I mean, who cares? Is it really that big of a deal that your date in the car is wrong? Just set the time back to what it should be and go on with your day. On the list of things to pay special attention to, I would much rather they prioritize safety and reliability.

avianlyric 5y ago
Until you turn it off, and resets itself to the incorrect date again, despite having the auto-update feature turned off. Which what these Hondas are doing. So every time you turn the ignition, the car “corrects” its clock to the wrong date.
- nexuist 5y ago
  While that's relatively worse, it's still a non-issue - just look at your phone if you want the current time. Nobody buys a car for its accurate timekeeping abilities. I understand that customers are rightfully pissed off that they paid for a clock and no longer have a working clock, but the cost of said clock can't have been more than a few dollars so it still doesn't really matter. In my head this would suck a lot more if the time was needed to enable more connectivity i.e. syncing calendars, remote start/unlock, etc. But if that was the case these systems would use NTP and avoid this whole mess entirely.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    That’s like the slumlord approach to property maintenance. Screen door is broken? Building Code doesn’t require it, rip the thing off! If you’re making a durable product that’s going to be around for a decade or two, make it right. This attitude that we should just shrug and accept bad “engineering” is just dumb. Honda in particular didn’t move their entertainment systems to CarPlay/Android Auto until 2018 in some models - so internally they felt there was some strategic advantage to owning the car entertainment stack, and they still fucked it up. Where else do they suck?
    - nexuist 5y ago

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

It's an engineering discipline like drug dealing is medicine, we are all keeping up a big charade.

dang 5y ago

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29832525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29832525.