15 ms·

No, his attitude is entirely appropriate. Learn your basics before you try to reinvent stuff. As Alan Kay keeps reminding us, the programming community doesn't

by npalli 13y ago

No, his attitude is entirely appropriate. Learn your basics before you try to reinvent stuff. As Alan Kay keeps reminding us, the programming community doesn't really learn anything that is done in the past and is doomed to keep reinventing stuff or working on things that have been shown not to work. For example, if you study physics you are not going to go far if you show up to class and start dropping apples and say this shows some magic force is operating. Learn the basics of engineering first then try to change things. Otherwise you will just waste everybodys time. As for your programming example, the more appropriate case would be if someone showed up with a revolutionary proposal to allocate memory for a GC, you see the source code and there is a big array structure defined locally "char memory[10000000]". There is far more things wrong here than trying to figure out ways to scale this in production.

arethuza 13y ago
"Learn the basics of engineering first then try to change things. Otherwise you will just waste everybodys time." So what about SpaceX and Tesla? To me those indicate that Musk must be a pretty decent engineer, and perhaps more importantly, must be excellent at leading real hardcore engineers in complex domains.
- simias 13y ago
  What's your point? Because you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at everything. That being said, I agree that the tone of the article is a bit too harsh for my taste, but then again Linux Torvalds is revered here for this kind of tone. It's always good to think outside of the box and bring new ideas to the table. Even if they're dead ends, they keep the brains working, if only to form counter proposals. N.B.: american friends, pretty please, consider including metric values alongside imperial, I have no idea what 1030feet means. Fortunately we have google for unit conversion...
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    A foot is about a third of meter, and a mile is about a kilometer and a half. That's all you really need to remember. Heck, in a discussion like this you could pretend a mile equals a kilometer and be fine. Oh, and a pound is about half a kilogram. I won't expect you to remember all the stupid volume units, but those three tiny conversions are worth knowing.
    - officemonkey 13y ago
      And a liter is about 1/4 of a gallon (useful when calculating gasoline prices.)
      - acqq 13y ago
        Or about 2 pints, useful for beer.
  - jblow 13y ago
    Okay, but who is Dr. Drang? As nearly as I can tell from a web search, he is someone puts some code on Github and writes a blog. Has he sent rockets into space? Why does he feel like he gets to talk down to someone who has sent rockets into space, on the subject of engineering?
    - mbrd 13y ago
      "Dr. Drang, a consulting engineer well known amongst nerds on the Internet" (from http://5by5.tv/systematic/57 http://5by5.tv/systematic/57)
      - warfangle 13y ago
        Seems super legit
    - nonchalance 13y ago
      Now that's an appeal to authority. Regardless of whether this person is a doctor or a billionaire or a physicist, the key points (like the issues with thermal expansion) are legitimate criticisms. "Dr Drang" presented arguments that are within the reach of high school physics. Now, Musk may have an answer to the issues, but he certainly didn't present them. The fact that there is no obvious resolution suggests that either Musk didn't think of them or he intentionally omitted the answer (both are damning)
      - ash 13y ago
        > key points (like the issues with thermal expansion) are legitimate criticisms No, thermal expansion criticism is not careful enough. See my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238022
        wheremiah 13y ago
        Yeah, this was my initial confusion with the article and many of the comments. When I read the doc by Musk, I assumed, that the tube 'floated' over the pylons. The author seems to have assumed the opposite. The problem is that they are both assumptions. When making an argument, sometimes it is good to make an assumption and then prove the assumption is false... sometimes it is just a straw man.
  - Fishkins 13y ago
    > Because you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at everything. How is that statement relevant here? The criticism being responded to was that he doesn't know the basics of engineering. The response was there's significant evidence he knows a lot about engineering (and his employees who looked at this proposal probably know more). It doesn't matter whether he's good at everything. edit: fixed typo and added emphasis
    - simias 13y ago
      arethuza ninja-edited his comment after my reply, his initial reply was simply "So what about SpaceX and Tesla?", which didn't make a lot of sense to me. But my point still holds, because you're good at making rockets and electric carcs doesn't automatically make you an expert in high speed train infrastructure, so I don't really think that's a valid argument.
      - Dylan16807 13y ago
        It means you know a whole lot about thermal expansion.
        dragonwriter 13y ago
        It might mean you should know that, but to the extent it does, that makes it more, not less, notable that your work fails to demonstrate that.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > How is that statement relevant here? Because in real life (as opposed to, say, Star Trek), aerospace engineering and civil engineering ain't the same ballpark, ain't the same league, and ain't even the same flipping sport. [1] [1] with apologies to Pulp Fiction.
      - orillian 13y ago
        No, but a lot of the same types of problems surface even in all these different fields, engineering does have some rather uniquely diversified fields, but at their core they still follow ...a lot of... the same laws of physics.
  - saalweachter 13y ago
    1 foot ~= 1 nano-light-second
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > So what about SpaceX and Tesla? Neither of those depend on the kind of engineering necessary for a large terrestrial infrastructure project (and the required engineering is more similar between SpaceX and Tesla than between either and a large civil engineering project.)
- nonchalance 13y ago
  There is very little that is novel about SpaceX / Tesla. Both were excellent executions of visions that many people had. We've had pure-electric vehicles for more than a century (For example, Detroit Electric built an electric vehicle in 1914 -- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/EdisonElectricCar1913.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/EdisonEl... is a photo with Thomas Edison). Hyperloop is different. Others have talked about it, but this is the first time he is truly laying out an idea, so I wouldn't necessarily assume that he will be successful
- npalli 13y ago
  Tesla and SpaceX are great but I'm not aware of fundamental engineering principles they have overthrown. This is a strange religious argument you are making here. The logical conclusion to your attitude is that there is no engineering challenge that Musk and his compadres can't solve. How odd. People have been building bridges for millenia now, there is a rich history of engineering and science here. You can't just 'think out of the box' your way through some fundamental constraints. If you feel the original article is wrong then it is worth discussing. If Musk and friends are modern day messiahs what's there to discuss?
  - stonemetal 13y ago
    >Tesla and SpaceX are great but I'm not aware of fundamental engineering principles they have overthrown. No, but it is a pretty good claim to show an understanding of the basics that they supposedly haven't learned.
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      How so? The point being made in the blog post is that Musk has a severe misunderstanding of the fundamentals of civil engineering. That Musk runs a company that has successfully engineered cars and spacecraft in no way makes him qualified to construct the Hyperloop. Civil engineering isn't mechanical engineering isn't chemical engineering isn't aerospace engineering. These are different disciplines. Being a talented industrialist in one (or more) of these do not imply capability in any of the others.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        > Civil engineering isn't mechanical engineering isn't chemical engineering isn't aerospace engineering. That's true, but all of them derive from the same set of first principles, those defined by physics. > Being a talented industrialist in one (or more) of these do not imply capability in any of the others. Not true -- expertise is not implied, but capability certainly is. In this specific case, to predict the behavior of an evacuated transport tube, and given that the project doesn't resemble any existing projects, one could hardly do better than have a background in spacecraft booster design.
- teek 13y ago
  Tesla and SpaceX are both iterative technology. They both use existing technology and iterate improvements on it or apply it to new fields. The electric car was already proven feasible by GM and other companies or products like golf carts. It was more of a problem of the existing players being forced to build an electric car than keep doing what they've been doing to generate profits. SpaceX still uses rockets. The new tech in SpaceX is changing the rocket design between engines so it is manufacturable in larger quantities and utilizing faster computers to create reusable rocket stages that can land with their own power back on Earth. You could say that SpaceX is leveraging computer science artificial intelligence research, the general improvement in computing (cost and speed), and sensors. For example there are many videos of software controlled quadcopters performing various aerobatic stunts by analyzing and adjusting thrust in realtime based on sensor information.
  - Gravityloss 13y ago
    One could say there is nothing new in feedback control for vertical flight. It has even been coupled with GPS for precision motion and landing in rockets already many years ago by Armadillo Aerospace and others. All this could have been done in the seventies, bar the GPS part, which would have required some more costly alternatives. But even the V-2 had gyros on a free rotating platform that was connected to the thrust vectoring vanes that kept the rocket pointed to where the flight program required. The sensors weren't so good and you probably could not have throttled the V-2 to hover accurately, but maybe with radio guidance (that they actually used with some of the flights) it could have worked. Mechanical PID controllers date to late 1800s already (warship steering) so it was a totally straightforward thing to do, and was done by Goddard already. Nobody cared but the Germans...
- nsomething 13y ago
  If I recall correctly, Tesla had difficulty designing a transmission at first go and they are in the car business. So I guess the point is, apparently persistence counts for something.
- baddox 13y ago
  Why would you assume that the founder of SpaceX and Tesla "must be a pretty decent engineer"? I'm not saying Musk isn't, because I don't know much about him, but I certainly wouldn't assume that the founder of engineering-based companies must be a decent engineer. As for leading engineers in complex domains, that's more plausible, although the founder of a company doesn't need to be the person directly managing engineering teams.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    Exactly. Give me enough money and I could easily build a SpaceX and Tesla. How ? By hiring people who know how to easily build a SpaceX and Tesla.
- Arnor 13y ago
  If you're wondering where the conversation got derailed it was here: > Learn the basics of engineering Every single comment resulting from this comment has been partisan: Side 1: Elon Musk knows the basics of engineering as evidenced by his numerous successful projects. Side 2: Strawman: although the original comment was about _basics of engineering_ turn it into an argument about the differences between engineering disciplines. Seriously folks, if you're going to argue about semantics, skip the strawman, he ruins the party.
- robomartin 13y ago
  > So what about SpaceX and Tesla? To me those indicate that Musk must be a pretty decent engineer, and perhaps more importantly, must be excellent at leading real hardcore engineers in complex domains. Well, then, how do you explain the following? 1- Thermal expansion and contraction issues diametrically opposed to what happens in the real world 2- Proposing that an entire 300 or 400 mile tube be a single welded solid tube with no turns or incremental expansion gaps. Really? In the real world? Along the 5 freeway? 3- Grotesquely underestimating seismic effects 4- Estimating a cost at least one order of magnitude lower than what it will actually be in the real world 5- Not taking a drive down the Golden State highway before proposing that columns be installed every 100 feet to support the tubes. No, really, go on Google Maps and take the drive yourself. Start here: http://goo.gl/maps/zPPKa http://goo.gl/maps/zPPKa I think these guys thought it would be a cool and possibly marketing-worthy thing to put out something like this. They put a little time into it here and there and, per the paper, a short amount of full time effort. They were probably so focused on the tube transport physics that they neglected to connect to the real world. At some level I don't fault them for putting this out. They are obviously far more focused on building cars and rockets and that's exactly how it should be. If what came out was a fully engineered project it would have meant that they took valuable time away from Tesla and SpaceX to apply on this thing. That could border on being a breach of fiduciary duty. At this point I am going to mark this off as science fiction simply because I am now convinced it cannot be built outside of a super-expensive short range test installation.
Dylan16807 13y ago
A static allocation works perfectly well. If we want a hyperloop analogy, maybe they specifically pointed out that the runtime is 3x faster if you don't have to allocate during it, and that's what they're optimizing for. Nobody cares if it's revolutionary.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rossjudson 13y ago
On the other hand, if you're going to mock a proposal, it makes good sense to actually read it thoroughly. His criticisms on the thermal expansion issue are founded on the mistaken assumption that the tube is fixed to the pylons; this is contradicted by the first paragraph in the pylon section, which indicates that the pipe is not fixed longitudinally to the pylons. It slides.

by npalli 13y ago

arethuza 13y ago

"Learn the basics of engineering first then try to change things. Otherwise you will just waste everybodys time." So what about SpaceX and Tesla? To me those indicate that Musk must be a pretty decent engineer, and perhaps more importantly, must be excellent at leading real hardcore engineers in complex domains.

simias 13y ago
What's your point? Because you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at everything. That being said, I agree that the tone of the article is a bit too harsh for my taste, but then again Linux Torvalds is revered here for this kind of tone. It's always good to think outside of the box and bring new ideas to the table. Even if they're dead ends, they keep the brains working, if only to form counter proposals. N.B.: american friends, pretty please, consider including metric values alongside imperial, I have no idea what 1030feet means. Fortunately we have google for unit conversion...
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  A foot is about a third of meter, and a mile is about a kilometer and a half. That's all you really need to remember. Heck, in a discussion like this you could pretend a mile equals a kilometer and be fine. Oh, and a pound is about half a kilogram. I won't expect you to remember all the stupid volume units, but those three tiny conversions are worth knowing.
  - officemonkey 13y ago
    And a liter is about 1/4 of a gallon (useful when calculating gasoline prices.)
    - acqq 13y ago
      Or about 2 pints, useful for beer.
- jblow 13y ago
  Okay, but who is Dr. Drang? As nearly as I can tell from a web search, he is someone puts some code on Github and writes a blog. Has he sent rockets into space? Why does he feel like he gets to talk down to someone who has sent rockets into space, on the subject of engineering?
  - mbrd 13y ago
    "Dr. Drang, a consulting engineer well known amongst nerds on the Internet" (from http://5by5.tv/systematic/57 http://5by5.tv/systematic/57)
    - warfangle 13y ago
      Seems super legit
  - nonchalance 13y ago
    Now that's an appeal to authority. Regardless of whether this person is a doctor or a billionaire or a physicist, the key points (like the issues with thermal expansion) are legitimate criticisms. "Dr Drang" presented arguments that are within the reach of high school physics. Now, Musk may have an answer to the issues, but he certainly didn't present them. The fact that there is no obvious resolution suggests that either Musk didn't think of them or he intentionally omitted the answer (both are damning)
    - ash 13y ago
      > key points (like the issues with thermal expansion) are legitimate criticisms No, thermal expansion criticism is not careful enough. See my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238022
      - wheremiah 13y ago
        Yeah, this was my initial confusion with the article and many of the comments. When I read the doc by Musk, I assumed, that the tube 'floated' over the pylons. The author seems to have assumed the opposite. The problem is that they are both assumptions. When making an argument, sometimes it is good to make an assumption and then prove the assumption is false... sometimes it is just a straw man.
- Fishkins 13y ago
  > Because you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at everything. How is that statement relevant here? The criticism being responded to was that he doesn't know the basics of engineering. The response was there's significant evidence he knows a lot about engineering (and his employees who looked at this proposal probably know more). It doesn't matter whether he's good at everything. edit: fixed typo and added emphasis
  - simias 13y ago
    arethuza ninja-edited his comment after my reply, his initial reply was simply "So what about SpaceX and Tesla?", which didn't make a lot of sense to me. But my point still holds, because you're good at making rockets and electric carcs doesn't automatically make you an expert in high speed train infrastructure, so I don't really think that's a valid argument.
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      It means you know a whole lot about thermal expansion.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        It might mean you should know that, but to the extent it does, that makes it more, not less, notable that your work fails to demonstrate that.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > How is that statement relevant here? Because in real life (as opposed to, say, Star Trek), aerospace engineering and civil engineering ain't the same ballpark, ain't the same league, and ain't even the same flipping sport. [1] [1] with apologies to Pulp Fiction.
    - orillian 13y ago
      No, but a lot of the same types of problems surface even in all these different fields, engineering does have some rather uniquely diversified fields, but at their core they still follow ...a lot of... the same laws of physics.
- saalweachter 13y ago
  1 foot ~= 1 nano-light-second
dragonwriter 13y ago
> So what about SpaceX and Tesla? Neither of those depend on the kind of engineering necessary for a large terrestrial infrastructure project (and the required engineering is more similar between SpaceX and Tesla than between either and a large civil engineering project.)
nonchalance 13y ago
There is very little that is novel about SpaceX / Tesla. Both were excellent executions of visions that many people had. We've had pure-electric vehicles for more than a century (For example, Detroit Electric built an electric vehicle in 1914 -- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/EdisonElectricCar1913.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/EdisonEl... is a photo with Thomas Edison). Hyperloop is different. Others have talked about it, but this is the first time he is truly laying out an idea, so I wouldn't necessarily assume that he will be successful
npalli 13y ago
Tesla and SpaceX are great but I'm not aware of fundamental engineering principles they have overthrown. This is a strange religious argument you are making here. The logical conclusion to your attitude is that there is no engineering challenge that Musk and his compadres can't solve. How odd. People have been building bridges for millenia now, there is a rich history of engineering and science here. You can't just 'think out of the box' your way through some fundamental constraints. If you feel the original article is wrong then it is worth discussing. If Musk and friends are modern day messiahs what's there to discuss?
- stonemetal 13y ago
  >Tesla and SpaceX are great but I'm not aware of fundamental engineering principles they have overthrown. No, but it is a pretty good claim to show an understanding of the basics that they supposedly haven't learned.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    How so? The point being made in the blog post is that Musk has a severe misunderstanding of the fundamentals of civil engineering. That Musk runs a company that has successfully engineered cars and spacecraft in no way makes him qualified to construct the Hyperloop. Civil engineering isn't mechanical engineering isn't chemical engineering isn't aerospace engineering. These are different disciplines. Being a talented industrialist in one (or more) of these do not imply capability in any of the others.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Civil engineering isn't mechanical engineering isn't chemical engineering isn't aerospace engineering. That's true, but all of them derive from the same set of first principles, those defined by physics. > Being a talented industrialist in one (or more) of these do not imply capability in any of the others. Not true -- expertise is not implied, but capability certainly is. In this specific case, to predict the behavior of an evacuated transport tube, and given that the project doesn't resemble any existing projects, one could hardly do better than have a background in spacecraft booster design.
teek 13y ago
Tesla and SpaceX are both iterative technology. They both use existing technology and iterate improvements on it or apply it to new fields. The electric car was already proven feasible by GM and other companies or products like golf carts. It was more of a problem of the existing players being forced to build an electric car than keep doing what they've been doing to generate profits. SpaceX still uses rockets. The new tech in SpaceX is changing the rocket design between engines so it is manufacturable in larger quantities and utilizing faster computers to create reusable rocket stages that can land with their own power back on Earth. You could say that SpaceX is leveraging computer science artificial intelligence research, the general improvement in computing (cost and speed), and sensors. For example there are many videos of software controlled quadcopters performing various aerobatic stunts by analyzing and adjusting thrust in realtime based on sensor information.
- Gravityloss 13y ago
  One could say there is nothing new in feedback control for vertical flight. It has even been coupled with GPS for precision motion and landing in rockets already many years ago by Armadillo Aerospace and others. All this could have been done in the seventies, bar the GPS part, which would have required some more costly alternatives. But even the V-2 had gyros on a free rotating platform that was connected to the thrust vectoring vanes that kept the rocket pointed to where the flight program required. The sensors weren't so good and you probably could not have throttled the V-2 to hover accurately, but maybe with radio guidance (that they actually used with some of the flights) it could have worked. Mechanical PID controllers date to late 1800s already (warship steering) so it was a totally straightforward thing to do, and was done by Goddard already. Nobody cared but the Germans...
nsomething 13y ago
If I recall correctly, Tesla had difficulty designing a transmission at first go and they are in the car business. So I guess the point is, apparently persistence counts for something.
baddox 13y ago
Why would you assume that the founder of SpaceX and Tesla "must be a pretty decent engineer"? I'm not saying Musk isn't, because I don't know much about him, but I certainly wouldn't assume that the founder of engineering-based companies must be a decent engineer. As for leading engineers in complex domains, that's more plausible, although the founder of a company doesn't need to be the person directly managing engineering teams.
- threeseed 13y ago
  Exactly. Give me enough money and I could easily build a SpaceX and Tesla. How ? By hiring people who know how to easily build a SpaceX and Tesla.
Arnor 13y ago
If you're wondering where the conversation got derailed it was here: > Learn the basics of engineering Every single comment resulting from this comment has been partisan: Side 1: Elon Musk knows the basics of engineering as evidenced by his numerous successful projects. Side 2: Strawman: although the original comment was about _basics of engineering_ turn it into an argument about the differences between engineering disciplines. Seriously folks, if you're going to argue about semantics, skip the strawman, he ruins the party.
robomartin 13y ago
> So what about SpaceX and Tesla? To me those indicate that Musk must be a pretty decent engineer, and perhaps more importantly, must be excellent at leading real hardcore engineers in complex domains. Well, then, how do you explain the following? 1- Thermal expansion and contraction issues diametrically opposed to what happens in the real world 2- Proposing that an entire 300 or 400 mile tube be a single welded solid tube with no turns or incremental expansion gaps. Really? In the real world? Along the 5 freeway? 3- Grotesquely underestimating seismic effects 4- Estimating a cost at least one order of magnitude lower than what it will actually be in the real world 5- Not taking a drive down the Golden State highway before proposing that columns be installed every 100 feet to support the tubes. No, really, go on Google Maps and take the drive yourself. Start here: http://goo.gl/maps/zPPKa http://goo.gl/maps/zPPKa I think these guys thought it would be a cool and possibly marketing-worthy thing to put out something like this. They put a little time into it here and there and, per the paper, a short amount of full time effort. They were probably so focused on the tube transport physics that they neglected to connect to the real world. At some level I don't fault them for putting this out. They are obviously far more focused on building cars and rockets and that's exactly how it should be. If what came out was a fully engineered project it would have meant that they took valuable time away from Tesla and SpaceX to apply on this thing. That could border on being a breach of fiduciary duty. At this point I am going to mark this off as science fiction simply because I am now convinced it cannot be built outside of a super-expensive short range test installation.

Dylan16807 13y ago

A static allocation works perfectly well. If we want a hyperloop analogy, maybe they specifically pointed out that the runtime is 3x faster if you don't have to allocate during it, and that's what they're optimizing for. Nobody cares if it's revolutionary.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rossjudson 13y ago

On the other hand, if you're going to mock a proposal, it makes good sense to actually read it thoroughly. His criticisms on the thermal expansion issue are founded on the mistaken assumption that the tube is fixed to the pylons; this is contradicted by the first paragraph in the pylon section, which indicates that the pipe is not fixed longitudinally to the pylons. It slides.