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2026-03-20 04:41:30 German Gamboa: -/-| /dev/null .. dev/on equivalent product.md | |
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| + | # On Equivalent Product |
| + | |
| + | The following is an excerpt from "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" by Richard Hamming. |
| + | Over the last year it has been replaying in my head with regards to the shifts with agentic coding. |
| + | |
| + | >The computers make it possible for robots to do many things, including much of the present |
| + | manufacturing. Evidently computers will play a dominant role in robot operation, though one must |
| + | be careful not to claim the standard von Neumann type of computer will be the sole control mechanism, |
| + | rather probably the current neural net computers, fuzzy set logic, and variations will do much of the control. |
| + | Setting aside the child’s view of a robot as a machine resembling a human, but rather thinking of it as a |
| + | device for handling and controlling things in the material world, robots used in manufacturing do the |
| + | following: |
| + | A. Produce a better product under tighter control limits. |
| + | B. Produce usually a cheaper product. |
| + | C. Produce a different product. |
| + | This last point needs careful emphasis. |
| + | When we first passed from hand accounting to machine accounting we found it necessary, for |
| + | economical reasons if no other, to somewhat alter the accounting system. Similarly, when we passed from |
| + | strict hand fabrication to machine fabrication we passed from mainly screws and bolts to rivets and |
| + | welding. |
| + | It has rarely proved practical to produce exactly the same product by machines as we produced by |
| + | hand. |
| + | Indeed, one of the major items in the conversion from hand to machine production is the imaginative |
| + | redesign of an equivalent product. Thus in thinking of mechanizing a large organization, it won’t work if |
| + | you try to keep things in detail exactly the same, rather there must be a larger give-and-take if there is to be |
| + | a significant success. You must get the essentials of the job in mind and then design the mechanization to do |
| + | that job rather than trying to mechanize the current version—if you want a significant success in the long |
| + | run. |
| + | I need to stress this point; mechanization requires you produce an equivalent product, not identically the |
| + | same one. Furthermore, in any design it is now essential to consider field maintenance since in the long run |
| + | it often dominates all other costs. The more complex the designed system the more field maintenance must |
| + | be central to the final design. Only when field maintenance is part of the original design can it be safely |
| + | controlled; it is not wise to try to graft it on later. This applies to both mechanical things and to human |
| + | organizations. |