13 ms·

Just to paraphrase a meme "Not a Cell Phone in Sight, Just people living in the moment" : "Not a single SaaS in sight, Just people producing value" I was quick

Just to paraphrase a meme "Not a Cell Phone in Sight, Just people living in the moment" : "Not a single SaaS in sight, Just people producing value" I was quick to pick SaaS as a target, please suggest any better alternatives. I'm trying to convey the idea that technology is not the objective, it's a tool to achieve the goal. So if cassette tapes are getting you there you don't need a fancy software and newest hardware.

justrealist 3y ago
> Just people producing value You aren't very familiar with Japanese corporate culture.
- masklinn 3y ago
  This seems like a middle-size manufacturing company, not office jobs where the issue you’re referring to is most salient.
- bmitc 3y ago
  Their comment is reflecting upon the posted video and nothing else. Yes, Japan seems to have a rather vapid corporate culture in some areas (so do most countries), but Japan is also famous for manufacturing very high-quality goods using old and repurposed machines and passed down techniques, as seen in this video.
  - rob74 3y ago
    You'd be surprised to see how much old industrial machinery is still being used around the world, even in other developed countries. Machines like these are a huge investment, so as long as they are still working flawlessly (and I imagine that the Japanese take maintenance seriously, so the machines will be working flawlessly), it's hard to justify replacing them. So they use punch cards for the patterns, what's the problem? And I imagine the computer system is only needed when new punch cards have to be produced, which won't happen that often - for existing patterns, they can use the existing punch cards.
    - hanniabu 3y ago
      > Machines like these are a huge investment, so as long as they are still working flawlessly I worked at a Colgate manufacturing facility. They had an NJ plant that had mechanical production lines. They've been running for 40 years so by the time i was there they were running flawlessly day in and day out and no matter what went wrong the maintenance crew knew how to fix it right away. To save costs they shut down that plant and opened up a new one in SC with fancy brand new electronic machines that were supposed to have much better throughput. It took them years to get all the machines working and even still the old machines produced more in 8 hours than the new ones made in 12 hours. And whenever the was a problem with the machine it was always some wonky issue with the relays, sensors, and timing and we'd have sometimes days of downtime and would need OEMs to come in and fix it. They wasted millions on that move which was supposed to save money and be more efficient. Many were fired/demoted from that.
      - stevezsa8 3y ago
        It's shocking reading stuff like this.
        gottorf 3y ago
        I know you probably meant that in jest, but it makes sense as we have a sea change between the pre-digital and post-digital generations. And this isn't just a "back in my day, we knew when to get off the lawn"-type of observation; the post-digital cohort is used to copying and pasting bits where the new instance is a perfect reproduction of the old. Naturally, they think that you can copy a NJ factory and paste it in SC, sprinkle in some enhancements, and voila! You get a better version. But the world of atoms is much messier than the world of bits, and in the former even something like getting the floor of the factory to be level is a nontrivial task.
        stevezsa8 3y ago
        Maybe this just shows that I have some experience under my belt... but I understand that most things take longer and cost more than planned. So the thought of scrapping a working factory with decades of fine-tuning already done... pains me. I worked with one project manager who was straight out of school. I couldn't believe that the direction and management of multiple teams of engineers was coming from someone who was going to make all their rookie mistakes on our project... and all the people who hired him already left for new jobs, so no consequences for them.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bdhcuidbebe 3y ago
    What you described could be summarized as ”useless”.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - yard2010 3y ago
      You don't have to be snarky it is what it is
  - yard2010 3y ago
    Forget about humanity, there are like 100-200 more people that can buy a small country that have to have more money there
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    To be fair, aside from the arms dealing (which I'm probably just unaware of), Japanese corporate culture has done all of those things as well
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    You forgot 'cultural hegemony'.
raincole 3y ago
> I was quick to pick SaaS as a target, please suggest any better alternatives. JavaScript frameworks would be a candidate.
- goldenkey 3y ago
  Those are a psuedo SaaS (Google -Angular, Facebook - React) since the framework is funded, evangelized, and pays speakers to give talks at conferences. They usually kill the project if they can't make enough money off of the market of dependencies they created.
  - tough 3y ago
    Frameworks are just SaaS shovels
masswerk 3y ago
It has been working for 40+ years, it does the job, everybody using the system is familiar with it, it's robust (no network required), it's exceptionally easy to service and maintain (all through-hole technology on a single, comfortably large board), and the entire unit (computer, monitor, cassette drive) is rated at just 45 W (so it's probably using less than that.) Also, it's a beautiful machine adding a bit of joy to the work life. – Why should you want to change this?
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  But surely this needs to be upgraded to run on a cloud hosted Kubernetes instance? With Karpenter to dynamically scale up an down resources as needed? Supported by a ten people Infosec/SRE team
  - yard2010 3y ago
    Don't forget rewriting the code in Rust because it's faster and type safe! Or nodejs with typescript because it's type safe
    - masswerk 3y ago
      Arguably, 8-bit BASIC is type-safe, as well. :-)
      - patates 3y ago
        Totally non-opinionated tried and tested fact that all humanity knows: Anything that doesn't have discriminated unions cannot be used productively.
        kayodelycaon 3y ago
        Excellent choice of term. I've been a full-stack web developer for over a decade across multiple companies and this is the first time I've seen the phrase "discriminated unions". And the wikipedia article is horrendous. It starts with the following sentence and gets worse from there. > In computer science, a tagged union, also called a variant, variant record, choice type, discriminated union, disjoint union, sum type or coproduct, is a data structure used to hold a value that could take on several different, but fixed, types. It uses lots and lots of words to explain something that's very simple. If you don't already know what it is, you can't figure out which words are important. Then after all of the theory, it dives into a binary tree example which has to be the worst possible way to explain it. If you haven't implemented a binary tree before, you don't know any idea what you're looking at. It didn't help that I implemented a linked list in college. Also, the choice of language ensures you have no idea what the types are. I completely missed the first example was self-referential. It's like parody of a function programmer writing an explanation for anyone who isn't a functional programmer.
usrbinbash 3y ago
I think this is less a case of "don't use new tech if you don't have to" and more a case of "These are highly specialized weaving machines that were build decades ago around using punched cards, and whatever benefit by speedup in process we would get from replacing their ancient control system with a modern one, would be dwarfed by the cost of modifying them to use that control system." Or to say this with slightly less words: Replacing software and a couple of computers is cheap, compared to replacing room-sized industrial machinery.
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  Exactly this. Furthermore, it’s very common for factories to run older equipment because the cost of upgrading is higher, riskier, and shutting the factory down to do the upgrades comes with its own losses as well. It’s also worth noting that there was also modern computers in that video too. The system they used to “digitally preview” what the weave would look like. But that is a separate system from the ones that interface with the weaving machines and thus very easy and cheap to upgrade.
- rewmie 3y ago
  > (...) would be dwarfed by the cost of modifying them to use that control system." This should be the top comment. Cost is a critical factor. I would also stop riding the bus and drive a Ferrari to work if that option costs as much as a bus ticket. As it doesn't then I'm going to stick with the bus, but this does not make it a superior choice.
  - vincnetas 3y ago
    some would argue that bus is better for commuting than ferrari ;)
gregoriol 3y ago
The problem that will occur, and will prevent producing things, is that at some point finding parts and people able to repair those will be hard or impossible. I'm not saying that having latest or newest stuff is any better, just that using old stuff can bring some problems too.
- masswerk 3y ago
  The Z80 and most of the 47xx logic chips are still manufactured, though. (Small RAM and ROM chips may become a problem, in the near future.)
  - fennecfoxy 3y ago
    But then even if you have a small time electrical repair peep come in and pop a chip from a socket and drop in a replacement, what do you do if it still doesn't work anymore? In that scenario you need to find someone completely familiar with the old model of computer to break out the multimeter and oscilloscope. That's gonna be a huge pain. And in the meantime none of their stuff works, though I suppose they can rest on the existing library of punch cards they most certainly have. Or do it manually again.
    - masswerk 3y ago
      Even in the worst of cases, these were popular machines and you can buy one at ebay.jp about anytime. It probably becomes much more of a problem with hardware closer in time. E.g., it's a 486 machine, the network is probably ARCNET, because industrial, where do you get any hardware that fits in? (Contrary to its 486 siblings, the 8-bit machines are still around, because they were cultural significant, and there are folks playing around with them and preserving the knowledge of keeping them running. Finding the maintenance manual for a late 1970s machine is easy as compared to finding one for a, let's say, 2001 run-off-the-mill computer.) Also, you'll be re-entering any data there is, things will probably get lost, because the project stalls. Meanwhile, while you are re-planning, selecting the new hardware, comissioning an external team to furnish the new software, eventually test it and roll it out, any production connected to this is on halt…
vjust 3y ago
Lets apply some frameworks to it. Pick some "low hanging fruit". Apply a "cloud native approach" and engage in Agile ceremonies. Just kidding, couldn't agree more with your observation. Not a Phone in sight.
myth2018 3y ago
No UX-designed systems in sight, just users having a good experience.
jxramos 3y ago
yes! Sometimes I cry "technology just get out my way already", if it isn't going to enable what I want to do, I don't care what other stuff it has to offer. I'm on a specific endeavor and must build the thing if it doesn't already exist. To quote this Microsoft engineer whose name escapes me at the moment, nothing is implemented by default.

justrealist 3y ago

> Just people producing value You aren't very familiar with Japanese corporate culture.

masklinn 3y ago
This seems like a middle-size manufacturing company, not office jobs where the issue you’re referring to is most salient.
bmitc 3y ago
Their comment is reflecting upon the posted video and nothing else. Yes, Japan seems to have a rather vapid corporate culture in some areas (so do most countries), but Japan is also famous for manufacturing very high-quality goods using old and repurposed machines and passed down techniques, as seen in this video.
- rob74 3y ago
  You'd be surprised to see how much old industrial machinery is still being used around the world, even in other developed countries. Machines like these are a huge investment, so as long as they are still working flawlessly (and I imagine that the Japanese take maintenance seriously, so the machines will be working flawlessly), it's hard to justify replacing them. So they use punch cards for the patterns, what's the problem? And I imagine the computer system is only needed when new punch cards have to be produced, which won't happen that often - for existing patterns, they can use the existing punch cards.
  - hanniabu 3y ago
    > Machines like these are a huge investment, so as long as they are still working flawlessly I worked at a Colgate manufacturing facility. They had an NJ plant that had mechanical production lines. They've been running for 40 years so by the time i was there they were running flawlessly day in and day out and no matter what went wrong the maintenance crew knew how to fix it right away. To save costs they shut down that plant and opened up a new one in SC with fancy brand new electronic machines that were supposed to have much better throughput. It took them years to get all the machines working and even still the old machines produced more in 8 hours than the new ones made in 12 hours. And whenever the was a problem with the machine it was always some wonky issue with the relays, sensors, and timing and we'd have sometimes days of downtime and would need OEMs to come in and fix it. They wasted millions on that move which was supposed to save money and be more efficient. Many were fired/demoted from that.
    - stevezsa8 3y ago
      It's shocking reading stuff like this.
      - gottorf 3y ago
        I know you probably meant that in jest, but it makes sense as we have a sea change between the pre-digital and post-digital generations. And this isn't just a "back in my day, we knew when to get off the lawn"-type of observation; the post-digital cohort is used to copying and pasting bits where the new instance is a perfect reproduction of the old. Naturally, they think that you can copy a NJ factory and paste it in SC, sprinkle in some enhancements, and voila! You get a better version. But the world of atoms is much messier than the world of bits, and in the former even something like getting the floor of the factory to be level is a nontrivial task.
        stevezsa8 3y ago
        Maybe this just shows that I have some experience under my belt... but I understand that most things take longer and cost more than planned. So the thought of scrapping a working factory with decades of fine-tuning already done... pains me. I worked with one project manager who was straight out of school. I couldn't believe that the direction and management of multiple teams of engineers was coming from someone who was going to make all their rookie mistakes on our project... and all the people who hired him already left for new jobs, so no consequences for them.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
[flagged]
- bdhcuidbebe 3y ago
  What you described could be summarized as ”useless”.
- justrealist 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - yard2010 3y ago
    You don't have to be snarky it is what it is
- yard2010 3y ago
  Forget about humanity, there are like 100-200 more people that can buy a small country that have to have more money there
- kalleboo 3y ago
  To be fair, aside from the arms dealing (which I'm probably just unaware of), Japanese corporate culture has done all of those things as well
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  You forgot 'cultural hegemony'.

raincole 3y ago

> I was quick to pick SaaS as a target, please suggest any better alternatives. JavaScript frameworks would be a candidate.

goldenkey 3y ago
Those are a psuedo SaaS (Google -Angular, Facebook - React) since the framework is funded, evangelized, and pays speakers to give talks at conferences. They usually kill the project if they can't make enough money off of the market of dependencies they created.
- tough 3y ago
  Frameworks are just SaaS shovels

masswerk 3y ago

It has been working for 40+ years, it does the job, everybody using the system is familiar with it, it's robust (no network required), it's exceptionally easy to service and maintain (all through-hole technology on a single, comfortably large board), and the entire unit (computer, monitor, cassette drive) is rated at just 45 W (so it's probably using less than that.) Also, it's a beautiful machine adding a bit of joy to the work life. – Why should you want to change this?

oxfordmale 3y ago
But surely this needs to be upgraded to run on a cloud hosted Kubernetes instance? With Karpenter to dynamically scale up an down resources as needed? Supported by a ten people Infosec/SRE team
- yard2010 3y ago
  Don't forget rewriting the code in Rust because it's faster and type safe! Or nodejs with typescript because it's type safe
  - masswerk 3y ago
    Arguably, 8-bit BASIC is type-safe, as well. :-)
    - patates 3y ago
      Totally non-opinionated tried and tested fact that all humanity knows: Anything that doesn't have discriminated unions cannot be used productively.
      - kayodelycaon 3y ago
        Excellent choice of term. I've been a full-stack web developer for over a decade across multiple companies and this is the first time I've seen the phrase "discriminated unions". And the wikipedia article is horrendous. It starts with the following sentence and gets worse from there. > In computer science, a tagged union, also called a variant, variant record, choice type, discriminated union, disjoint union, sum type or coproduct, is a data structure used to hold a value that could take on several different, but fixed, types. It uses lots and lots of words to explain something that's very simple. If you don't already know what it is, you can't figure out which words are important. Then after all of the theory, it dives into a binary tree example which has to be the worst possible way to explain it. If you haven't implemented a binary tree before, you don't know any idea what you're looking at. It didn't help that I implemented a linked list in college. Also, the choice of language ensures you have no idea what the types are. I completely missed the first example was self-referential. It's like parody of a function programmer writing an explanation for anyone who isn't a functional programmer.

usrbinbash 3y ago

I think this is less a case of "don't use new tech if you don't have to" and more a case of "These are highly specialized weaving machines that were build decades ago around using punched cards, and whatever benefit by speedup in process we would get from replacing their ancient control system with a modern one, would be dwarfed by the cost of modifying them to use that control system." Or to say this with slightly less words: Replacing software and a couple of computers is cheap, compared to replacing room-sized industrial machinery.

hnlmorg 3y ago
Exactly this. Furthermore, it’s very common for factories to run older equipment because the cost of upgrading is higher, riskier, and shutting the factory down to do the upgrades comes with its own losses as well. It’s also worth noting that there was also modern computers in that video too. The system they used to “digitally preview” what the weave would look like. But that is a separate system from the ones that interface with the weaving machines and thus very easy and cheap to upgrade.
rewmie 3y ago
> (...) would be dwarfed by the cost of modifying them to use that control system." This should be the top comment. Cost is a critical factor. I would also stop riding the bus and drive a Ferrari to work if that option costs as much as a bus ticket. As it doesn't then I'm going to stick with the bus, but this does not make it a superior choice.
- vincnetas 3y ago
  some would argue that bus is better for commuting than ferrari ;)

gregoriol 3y ago

The problem that will occur, and will prevent producing things, is that at some point finding parts and people able to repair those will be hard or impossible. I'm not saying that having latest or newest stuff is any better, just that using old stuff can bring some problems too.

masswerk 3y ago
The Z80 and most of the 47xx logic chips are still manufactured, though. (Small RAM and ROM chips may become a problem, in the near future.)
- fennecfoxy 3y ago
  But then even if you have a small time electrical repair peep come in and pop a chip from a socket and drop in a replacement, what do you do if it still doesn't work anymore? In that scenario you need to find someone completely familiar with the old model of computer to break out the multimeter and oscilloscope. That's gonna be a huge pain. And in the meantime none of their stuff works, though I suppose they can rest on the existing library of punch cards they most certainly have. Or do it manually again.
  - masswerk 3y ago
    Even in the worst of cases, these were popular machines and you can buy one at ebay.jp about anytime. It probably becomes much more of a problem with hardware closer in time. E.g., it's a 486 machine, the network is probably ARCNET, because industrial, where do you get any hardware that fits in? (Contrary to its 486 siblings, the 8-bit machines are still around, because they were cultural significant, and there are folks playing around with them and preserving the knowledge of keeping them running. Finding the maintenance manual for a late 1970s machine is easy as compared to finding one for a, let's say, 2001 run-off-the-mill computer.) Also, you'll be re-entering any data there is, things will probably get lost, because the project stalls. Meanwhile, while you are re-planning, selecting the new hardware, comissioning an external team to furnish the new software, eventually test it and roll it out, any production connected to this is on halt…

vjust 3y ago

Lets apply some frameworks to it. Pick some "low hanging fruit". Apply a "cloud native approach" and engage in Agile ceremonies. Just kidding, couldn't agree more with your observation. Not a Phone in sight.

myth2018 3y ago

No UX-designed systems in sight, just users having a good experience.

jxramos 3y ago

yes! Sometimes I cry "technology just get out my way already", if it isn't going to enable what I want to do, I don't care what other stuff it has to offer. I'm on a specific endeavor and must build the thing if it doesn't already exist. To quote this Microsoft engineer whose name escapes me at the moment, nothing is implemented by default.