4 ms·

I worked for one of the big defense contractors until recently. One of the most enlightening things I got to see while there was a tour of the F-18 assembly lin

by pilom 13y ago

I worked for one of the big defense contractors until recently. One of the most enlightening things I got to see while there was a tour of the F-18 assembly line. While the fear about what would happen to the jobs and the facility after the end of production was palatable, it was amazing to see the facility. The challenges faced by big assembly line manufacturing were so foreign to me coming from a computer programming background. For instance while as a programmer, my bugs might crash a computer, for them, an unused rivet hiding in the bottom of an engine might clog a fuel line and crash a plane. Made me appreciate the manufactured goods in my life more.

Spearchucker 13y ago
It's an educational experience for sure, and has some bearing on how we build software. Imagine using scrum to develop an F18. Or a heart monitor you strap to your wide to monitor your kid's heart beat during labour. How stable or even coherent would Excel be if it was built using eXtreme Programming?
- icebraining 13y ago
  Yes, but the hypothetical wife wouldn't ask for the monitor to be improved with new features. While she was in labour.
  - Spearchucker 13y ago
    She'd be asking(?) for drugs, you're right. However the hapless father who can't do anything but look on would.
- bane 13y ago
  What's interesting is that in the early days of the jet age, fast protyping and testing was the norm when designing new aircraft. The dozens of experimental planes from that age are fascinating stuff.
  - Spearchucker 13y ago
    Prototyping is a technique that addresses some of the shortfalls in waterfall. Amusingly, other than names for things there is nothing new in agile methodologies like scrum and XP. They've been around since the early '80s. If you're into process, try and get your hands on a copy of (it's a mouthful) - Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions: A Catolog of Modern Engineering Paradigms: A Catalogue of Modern Software Engineering Paradigms (Yourdon Press Computing), by Peter DeGrace and Leslie Hulet Stahl. http://www.amazon.com/dp/013590126X http://www.amazon.com/dp/013590126X.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Palatable means tasty. Palpable means you could feel it. /nitpick, unless you were being especially tongue in cheek.
- pilom 13y ago
  Whoops thanks for seeing that. My bad.
Patrick_Devine 13y ago
The difference is that there is a lot more complexity in software than there is in hardware. As a software engineer you make a million tiny decisions every day. As a riveter, you follow a blue print and put the rivet in the same designated places on every every machine over and over again. The fewer decisions made on a production floor, the better. That said, the thought process which goes in to designing an assembly line is fascinating. The techniques you can use when you're producing 5 parts a day vs 50,000 parts a day are quite different from each other. You have to balance those various costs and take into consideration your supply chain and the quality of one technique over another (yay linear algebra).

by pilom 13y ago

Spearchucker 13y ago

It's an educational experience for sure, and has some bearing on how we build software. Imagine using scrum to develop an F18. Or a heart monitor you strap to your wide to monitor your kid's heart beat during labour. How stable or even coherent would Excel be if it was built using eXtreme Programming?

icebraining 13y ago
Yes, but the hypothetical wife wouldn't ask for the monitor to be improved with new features. While she was in labour.
- Spearchucker 13y ago
  She'd be asking(?) for drugs, you're right. However the hapless father who can't do anything but look on would.
bane 13y ago
What's interesting is that in the early days of the jet age, fast protyping and testing was the norm when designing new aircraft. The dozens of experimental planes from that age are fascinating stuff.
- Spearchucker 13y ago
  Prototyping is a technique that addresses some of the shortfalls in waterfall. Amusingly, other than names for things there is nothing new in agile methodologies like scrum and XP. They've been around since the early '80s. If you're into process, try and get your hands on a copy of (it's a mouthful) - Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions: A Catolog of Modern Engineering Paradigms: A Catalogue of Modern Software Engineering Paradigms (Yourdon Press Computing), by Peter DeGrace and Leslie Hulet Stahl. http://www.amazon.com/dp/013590126X http://www.amazon.com/dp/013590126X.

anigbrowl 13y ago

Palatable means tasty. Palpable means you could feel it. /nitpick, unless you were being especially tongue in cheek.

pilom 13y ago
Whoops thanks for seeing that. My bad.

Patrick_Devine 13y ago

The difference is that there is a lot more complexity in software than there is in hardware. As a software engineer you make a million tiny decisions every day. As a riveter, you follow a blue print and put the rivet in the same designated places on every every machine over and over again. The fewer decisions made on a production floor, the better. That said, the thought process which goes in to designing an assembly line is fascinating. The techniques you can use when you're producing 5 parts a day vs 50,000 parts a day are quite different from each other. You have to balance those various costs and take into consideration your supply chain and the quality of one technique over another (yay linear algebra).