4 ms·
I was under the assumption traffic signalling was so horrible because it was a simple timing based system. Knowing they are all networked, accessible, and cont
by snarfy 12y ago
I was under the assumption traffic signalling was so horrible because it was a simple timing based system.
Knowing they are all networked, accessible, and controllable from a central computer infuriates me, not because they are hackable, but because the software currently running them is so, so horrible. It's good ol' 'government' software.
- fiatjaf 12y agoWell, this is a difficult thing for a software to do.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoObligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/277/ http://xkcd.com/277/. That is, as a driver, one isn't in a position to judge whether traffic lights timing make sense, because they're optimized globally to ensure best traffic throughput in the whole city.
- walls 12y agoWhen you're sitting at a red light for several minutes at one in the morning with no cars visible for miles, it doesn't take a traffic engineer to realize that intersection is not working optimally.
- snarfy 12y agoBut as a software engineer, I can certainly say that comic is wrong. After enough short sighted releases, mountains of technical debt, poor coding standards, and general apathy, I do not believe the engineer depicted in the comic is accurate. "Hours of simulation" and "took me a week to work out the timing sequences". No. No government paid software engineer spent a week working out the timing sequences. They hacked out something as quick as they could to meet the ridiculous deadline they were given, and then had a good laugh about fixing the process during the retrospective meeting.