In my experience, the history of _anything_ is helpful in understanding its current form. There's an awful lot of That-was-the-best-way-then and It-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time in hardware, biology, and politics, as well as in software. And a lot of "paving the cowpaths".
The Rolls Royce Merlin was a fantastic piece of engineering, full of brilliant flourishes. One of those was a small tab on the crankshaft. US manufacturers had to simplify the design in order to produce it, with one of the simplifications being the omission of that tab. It just didn't *do* anything.
Unless you were running under full War Emergency Power for an extended period. Then it kept the crankshaft from breaking.
Good point. There is a tendency to assume that what is not understood serves no purpose.
Also a tendency to assume that if the traditional explanation for a traditional action seems silly, the traditional action serves no purpose.
People whose jobs or ways of life are hazardous tend to be conservative, not wanting to change any aspect of a successful routine, no matter how irrelevant it might seem.
So there are always people trying to get rid of "useless" but actually functional things, and people trying to hold onto "necessary" but actually non-functional things. And assuming they know which are which.... I try to be humble about my own assumptions, but I don't succeed at that very well.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 11:44 pm (UTC)The Rolls Royce Merlin was a fantastic piece of engineering, full of brilliant flourishes. One of those was a small tab on the crankshaft. US manufacturers had to simplify the design in order to produce it, with one of the simplifications being the omission of that tab. It just didn't *do* anything.
Unless you were running under full War Emergency Power for an extended period. Then it kept the crankshaft from breaking.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-10 06:13 am (UTC)Also a tendency to assume that if the traditional explanation for a traditional action seems silly, the traditional action serves no purpose.
People whose jobs or ways of life are hazardous tend to be conservative, not wanting to change any aspect of a successful routine, no matter how irrelevant it might seem.
So there are always people trying to get rid of "useless" but actually functional things, and people trying to hold onto "necessary" but actually non-functional things. And assuming they know which are which.... I try to be humble about my own assumptions, but I don't succeed at that very well.