Propeller Head Plaza

Sure it does. It's an important distinction to make between product development and maintenance.

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In Reply to: RE: Always tinker.... posted by unclestu52 on June 06, 2008 at 13:19:35

If I understand your point I think it raises the question of what is the design intent and was it accomplished? If multi use is a design requirement then the final performance will be judged based on that. Your example of buildings and bridges highlights this. If for example a bridge was designed to pass a single truck and then fall down would be considered a success as long as the truck made it across undamaged one time. Sure the bridge is lying in a heap of rubble at the bottom of a canyon but it did it's job perfectly and therefore would be deemed an engineering success since it ultimately accomplished the job it was intended for.

The problem with buildings and bridges is the money necessary to build the perfect one goes up exponentially after a certain level of engineering competence has been achieved. They are concieved and designed as disposable objects replaceable or repairable as the need arises. Why put all your engineering talent into a single bridge when a whole city must be built? For example diamonds might be a little harder and last a little longer as a road surface than asphalt but who in their right mind would build roads out of diamonds. I believe we make choices about minimum and maximum acceptable cost/performance for everything we create nad often quality tradeoffs are made in favor of saving money. This to me doesn't mean we couldn't have designed something better....to me it means we have properly defined what value our finished design will have to us and have scaled the quality appropriately.

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