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The moniker of "hard" engineering is neither precise nor useful. What makes engineering hard? Is solving problems with distributed systems, even if these system
by kccqzy 3y ago
The moniker of "hard" engineering is neither precise nor useful. What makes engineering hard? Is solving problems with distributed systems, even if these systems are for ads, hard? Or do you mean hardware? In that case even Nvidia is not hard enough since they don't fabricate their own chips. Or do you mean designing hardware? Then what makes writing system verilog at a desk hard but writing Python not hard?
- TechnicolorByte 3y agoI admit that was a glib comment and unnecessary. I’m really speaking about Nvidia’s ability to perform well in both hardware and software, at chip-scale and datacenter-scale. Also speaking of their product/business direction that revolutionizes multiple industries (leaders in graphics with ray tracing and AI frame/resolution sacking; leaders in AI infra and datacenter systems, etc.) all resulting in big impacts to their respective industries. You’re right that many of those software-only companies do very real engineering with distributed systems and such. I should’ve been more precise and was really complaining about the SV hype of the 2010s focusing on regulating-breaking companies like Airbnb, Uber, wework, etc. and on companies like Meta and Google who focus on pushing ads for their revenue.
- omniglottal 3y agoI suppose the difference is engineering something deterministic (i.e., physics, electronics, logic) versus something soft and indistinct (SEO, ad impressions, customer conversion rate).
- nsteel 3y agoIt's hard to get complex systems correct. There's far less margin for error when you get a hardware design wrong. Correcting a Python software mistake is orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to resolve, it doesn't cost multiple billions and take 6 months to iterate. You might consider the hardware design harder in that respect.