3 ms·

It's not irrational to appreciate elegance. It is an elegant design to to achieve a goal with simpler and fewer parts. A uC and a dozen sensors and actuators

It's not irrational to appreciate elegance. It is an elegant design to to achieve a goal with simpler and fewer parts. A uC and a dozen sensors and actuators and MB of code is a brute force solution. It's flexible and functional but not elegant. Instead of figuring out some way for a thing to happen by itself, you explicitly write a bunch of code to spell it all out. Now the uC way is more flexible. You can change the code to change what happens, but that's a separate metric and a separate value. Not all tasks or products actually benefit from it, and it comes at the cost of complexity and reliability and longevity and dependence on infrastructure and supply chain. Personally, I think it's completely and utterly ridiculous that a toaster requires a chip fab. I know why it's not really that crazy if chip fabs happen to exist anyway for other reasons but the observation of the absurdity does still stand.

kccqzy 3y ago
This is false. Nothing happened "by itself". This thing as explained by the author of the article requires "a series of cleverly designed levers" and "a mechanical thermostat" and "a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire". This kind of mechanical engineering is really no different from software engineering. You design a series of mechanisms to make things happen, whether through levers and screws and bimetal strips or code. With code, frankly less effort is needed for such design. And yes there could be elegance in code that is not directly apparent to the consumer, much like there is elegance here. I'm not disputing elegance. I'm decrying the lack of functionality and lack of control by the user.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Many aspects of the things operation happen by itself. They cut a piece of metal to a particular shape, but the properties and behavior of that metal already existed and were not designed by anyone, merely disscovered and utilized. It's somewhat like the difference between a mechanical interlock and a program with rules that do the same thing. You could have two solenoids operating two relays, and two extra contacts on each relay to act as sensors, and some code that says if A is on then turn B off, if B is on then turn A off. (pretend for the moment that a single relay can't be both sides at the same time) Or you could have no solenoids and no sensors and no computer, just a solid bar connecting the two switches with a pivot in the middle. It becomes impossible to press both switches at once, and the function, the enforcing of the desired truth table rule, very much happens "by itself". The fact that a person designed and fashioned the mechanical interlock does not make the two systems equal, in kind not just in degree.

kccqzy 3y ago

This is false. Nothing happened "by itself". This thing as explained by the author of the article requires "a series of cleverly designed levers" and "a mechanical thermostat" and "a single screw underneath the crumb tray to adjust the tension of the wire". This kind of mechanical engineering is really no different from software engineering. You design a series of mechanisms to make things happen, whether through levers and screws and bimetal strips or code. With code, frankly less effort is needed for such design. And yes there could be elegance in code that is not directly apparent to the consumer, much like there is elegance here. I'm not disputing elegance. I'm decrying the lack of functionality and lack of control by the user.

Brian_K_White 3y ago
Many aspects of the things operation happen by itself. They cut a piece of metal to a particular shape, but the properties and behavior of that metal already existed and were not designed by anyone, merely disscovered and utilized. It's somewhat like the difference between a mechanical interlock and a program with rules that do the same thing. You could have two solenoids operating two relays, and two extra contacts on each relay to act as sensors, and some code that says if A is on then turn B off, if B is on then turn A off. (pretend for the moment that a single relay can't be both sides at the same time) Or you could have no solenoids and no sensors and no computer, just a solid bar connecting the two switches with a pivot in the middle. It becomes impossible to press both switches at once, and the function, the enforcing of the desired truth table rule, very much happens "by itself". The fact that a person designed and fashioned the mechanical interlock does not make the two systems equal, in kind not just in degree.