4 ms·

Turning the Crank: Design as a Mechanical Process

34 points by karmaniverous 2y ago

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
the first word is recently, with a very large space between the capitalized R and ecently. So R ecently. I thought it was going to be about the R programming language and am still upset it wasn't.
- gwern 2y ago
  Presumably, you're using Firefox or Safari, and so the `initial-letter` CSS property they're trying to use to make a big serif 'R' dropcap letter is breaking: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/initial-letter https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/initial-let... (You're not missing much. 'A large serif letter from the body font' is about the most boring possible dropcap and not really worth the hassle, IMO.)
  - karmaniverous 2y ago
    Haha guilty! Doesn't show up well on mobile. Fixing it today!
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    good catch, I didn't think about that possibility. Although personal opinion, nearly always hate drop caps on the web - maybe OK for poetry on Medium or something where you have limited design possibilities, otherwise disturbing concentration.
kmerroll 2y ago
Very interesting article and helpful to visualize the layers and perspectives in and more comprehensive architecture diagram. I would add that the layers of abstraction could also be represented in a standard Semantic Web OWL ontology which would capture a lot more context and sematic detail related to hierarchies, concepts, classes, and object property relationships. Picture are great, but it's always a struggle to get them complete.
mikehollinger 2y ago
https://c4model.com/ https://c4model.com/ is very useful for this. :-) I've told it before, but when we were doing some clean sheet work a while ago I decided to use the C4 model and drew out the obligatory "Context" diagram with "user" "phone" "laptop" "app" sort of stuff. I found them silly and (honestly) I still find that if I see one "in the wild" with no further elaboration I become suspect. However two hours later, because of that silly context diagram, I realized that we had both an online and a semi-disconnected mobile app that could be offline for hours, and that certain things -had- to use a queue and expect an arbitrary amount of time for a task to run, and it completely changed how we thought about the core of how we implemented something pretty important. Sold. :-)
- anitil 2y ago
  Most of what I do these days is silly drawings in excalidraw. As a result I seem to understand more of our systems than anyone else. I'll even export the SVGs and commit them to our repos
- karmaniverous 2y ago
  "A picture is worth a thousand words" is just gabble until you draw one worth a million of them :)
Animats 2y ago
> Frank Gehry is arguably one of the world’s greatest living architects. Oh, please. Have you seen that mess at MIT? Actually, I wonder what tools he and his people use for design. A floor plan and an elevation are nowhere near enough for those strange shapes. Something like an auto body design tool might be needed.
- tonypace 2y ago
  He uses a custom system called Digital Project. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Project
- karmaniverous 2y ago
  Ok fair enough but didn't have the same ring as "best known for promoting his own design artifacts".
- adamhartenz 2y ago
  Sounds like you are putting the "argue" in "arguably", so they are not wrong.
lenzai 2y ago
I have had great results using https://structurizr.com/ https://structurizr.com/ to generate c4model.com The only tool for diagram as code with which achieved 100% DRY. Very interesting tool by the inventor of C4
- karmaniverous 2y ago
  I like it, but I like PlantUML better. Shitty documentation but awesome UML support, and also supports GraphML and a bunch of smaller libs like C4.
RWilliscroft 2y ago
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34 points by karmaniverous 2y ago

the first word is recently, with a very large space between the capitalized R and ecently. So R ecently. I thought it was going to be about the R programming language and am still upset it wasn't.

gwern 2y ago
Presumably, you're using Firefox or Safari, and so the `initial-letter` CSS property they're trying to use to make a big serif 'R' dropcap letter is breaking: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/initial-letter https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/initial-let... (You're not missing much. 'A large serif letter from the body font' is about the most boring possible dropcap and not really worth the hassle, IMO.)
- karmaniverous 2y ago
  Haha guilty! Doesn't show up well on mobile. Fixing it today!
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  good catch, I didn't think about that possibility. Although personal opinion, nearly always hate drop caps on the web - maybe OK for poetry on Medium or something where you have limited design possibilities, otherwise disturbing concentration.

kmerroll 2y ago

Very interesting article and helpful to visualize the layers and perspectives in and more comprehensive architecture diagram. I would add that the layers of abstraction could also be represented in a standard Semantic Web OWL ontology which would capture a lot more context and sematic detail related to hierarchies, concepts, classes, and object property relationships. Picture are great, but it's always a struggle to get them complete.

mikehollinger 2y ago

https://c4model.com/ https://c4model.com/ is very useful for this. :-) I've told it before, but when we were doing some clean sheet work a while ago I decided to use the C4 model and drew out the obligatory "Context" diagram with "user" "phone" "laptop" "app" sort of stuff. I found them silly and (honestly) I still find that if I see one "in the wild" with no further elaboration I become suspect. However two hours later, because of that silly context diagram, I realized that we had both an online and a semi-disconnected mobile app that could be offline for hours, and that certain things -had- to use a queue and expect an arbitrary amount of time for a task to run, and it completely changed how we thought about the core of how we implemented something pretty important. Sold. :-)

anitil 2y ago
Most of what I do these days is silly drawings in excalidraw. As a result I seem to understand more of our systems than anyone else. I'll even export the SVGs and commit them to our repos
karmaniverous 2y ago
"A picture is worth a thousand words" is just gabble until you draw one worth a million of them :)

Animats 2y ago

> Frank Gehry is arguably one of the world’s greatest living architects. Oh, please. Have you seen that mess at MIT? Actually, I wonder what tools he and his people use for design. A floor plan and an elevation are nowhere near enough for those strange shapes. Something like an auto body design tool might be needed.

tonypace 2y ago
He uses a custom system called Digital Project. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Project
karmaniverous 2y ago
Ok fair enough but didn't have the same ring as "best known for promoting his own design artifacts".
adamhartenz 2y ago
Sounds like you are putting the "argue" in "arguably", so they are not wrong.

lenzai 2y ago

I have had great results using https://structurizr.com/ https://structurizr.com/ to generate c4model.com The only tool for diagram as code with which achieved 100% DRY. Very interesting tool by the inventor of C4

karmaniverous 2y ago
I like it, but I like PlantUML better. Shitty documentation but awesome UML support, and also supports GraphML and a bunch of smaller libs like C4.

RWilliscroft 2y ago

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