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by haxiomic
749 days ago
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I used to struggle with this. Good engineering is not about good code. Good engineering is about taking the actions you need to take to solve a problem while minimising costs. Usually the problem is making money and usually the biggest expense is time.
Writing good code can be useful but knowing when not to spend the time makes you a better engineer. Our school took us to the engineering department at the local university for a taster day. They challenged us to build a wheeled robot which could cross a swimming pool in the shortest time possible.
I got together with my geeky friends and at the end of the day we proudly presented our clever tower of gears robot which kept the motor above water while transferring power to the wheels The trouble makers in the class also teamed up and spent the whole day throwing around bits of Meccano at each other and at us. As the teachers announced end of time they quickly attached a couple wheels to their motor and called it a day. When it came time to race,
their entry sank straight to the bottom, hit the floor and sped across to the other side before ours had a chance to get its coat on. They won by a large margin, and for good reason! None of us had thought to wonder if the batteries and motor could run under water, it would only need to do it once and last say 30 seconds, none of us had questioned the requirements and we’d spent the day building something slow and complicated.
If I find myself spending too long on abstractions and not the problem I think back to this |
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