[ctoth]

This "practice-first, theory-later" pattern has been the norm rather than the exception. The steam engine predated thermodynamics. People bred plants and animals for thousands of years before Darwin or Mendel.

The few "top-down" examples where theory preceded application (like nuclear energy or certain modern pharmaceuticals) are relatively recent historical anomalies.

[marcelsalathe]

I see your point, but something still seems different. Yes we bred plants and animals, but we did not create them. Yes we did build steam engines before understanding thermodynamics but we still understood what they did (heat, pressure, movement, etc.)

Fun fact: we have no clue how most drugs works. Or, more precisely, we know a few aspects, but are only scratching the surface. We're even still discovering news things about Aspirin, one of the oldest drugs: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08626-7

[tmp10423288442]

> Yes we did build steam engines before understanding thermodynamics but we still understood what it did (heat, pressure, movement, etc.)

We only understood in the broadest sense. It took a long process of iteration before we could create steam engines that were efficient enough to start an Industrial Revolution. At the beginning they were so inefficient that they could only pump water from the same coal mine they got their fuel from, and subject to frequent boiler explosions besides.

[mystified5016]

We laid transatlantic telegraph wires before we even had a hint of the physics involved. It create the entire field of transmission and signal theory.

Shannon had to invent new physics to explain why the cables didn't work as expected.

[pas]

I think that's misleading.

There was a lot of physics already known, importance of insulation and cross-section, signal attenuation was also known.

The future Lord Kelvin conducted experiments. The two scientific advisors had a conflict. And the "CEO" went with the cheaper option.

""" Thomson believed that Whitehouse's measurements were flawed and that underground and underwater cables were not fully comparable. Thomson believed that a larger cable was needed to mitigate the retardation problem. In mid-1857, on his own initiative, he examined samples of copper core of allegedly identical specification and found variations in resistance up to a factor of two. But cable manufacture was already underway, and Whitehouse supported use of a thinner cable, so Field went with the cheaper option. """

[anthk]

THe telegraph it's older than radio. Think about it.

[cft]

that was 1854. You basically only needed Ohm's law for that, which was discovered in 1827

[JPLeRouzic]

Ohm's law for a cable 4000 km/3000 miles long? That implies transmission was instantaneous and without any alteration in shape.

I guess the rise time was tens of milliseconds and rebounds in signals lasted for milliseconds or more. Hardly something you can neglect.

For reference, in my time (the 1980) in the telecom industry, we had to regenerate digital signals every 2km.

[cft]

"Initially messages were sent by an operator using Morse code. The reception was very bad on the 1858 cable, and it took two minutes to transmit just one character (a single letter or a single number), a rate of about 0.1 words per minute."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cabl...

I guess your bandwidth in 1980 was a bit higher.

[arijo]

Almost all civil, chemical, electrical, etc., engineering emerged from a practice-first, theory-later evolution.

[pclmulqdq]

Most of what we refer to as "engineering" involves using principles that flow down from science to do stuff. The return to the historic norm is sort of a return to the "useful arts" or some other idea.

[adastra22]

We don’t create LLMs either. We evolve/train them. I think the comparison is closer than you think.

[no_wizard]

We most definitely create them though, there is an entire A -> B follow you can do.

It’s complicated but they are most definitely created.

[homeyKrogerSage]

Dawg

[ants_everywhere]

This isn't quite true, although it's commonly said.

For steam engines, the first commercial ones came after and were based on scientific advancements that made them possible. One built in 1679 was made by an associate of Boyle, who discovered Boyle's law. These early steam engines co-evolved with thermodynamics. The engines improved and hit a barrier, at which point Carnot did his famous work.

This is putting aside steam engines that are mostly curiosities like ones built in the ancient world.

See, for example

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics#History

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine#History

[karparov]

It's been there in programming from essentially the first day too. People skip the theory and just get hacking.

Otherwise we'd all be writing Haskell now. Or rather we'd not be writing anything since a real compiler would still have been to hacky and not theoretically correct.

I'm writing this with both a deep admiration as well as practical repulsion of C.S. theory.

[cryptonector]

Canons and archery and catapults predated Newtonian classical mechanics.