4 ms·
Once a program overflows a single engineer's mental buffer, all bets are off. I think the size of that buffer is one thing that separates good from great in our
by encoderer 12y ago
Once a program overflows a single engineer's mental buffer, all bets are off. I think the size of that buffer is one thing that separates good from great in our line of work. We engineer systems to not rely on a single persons understanding, and it's an important part of what we do, but that doesn't mean we don't lose something when it gets beyond the grok of the humans building it.
- agency 12y ago"Relative to the complexity we can create, we are all statistically at the same point in understanding it." (paraphrasing Rich Hickey) I don't think the size of the buffer is what distinguishes the good from great, because complexity is combinatorial in nature. It's the ability to mitigate complexity by designing systems composed of simple parts.
- ams6110 12y agoThese sorts of discussions always remind me of the essay that "nobody knows how to make a pencil" http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html