I have a 2009 Citroen and the battery is secured with a bolt that is under the battery compartment and to access it you need to go under the car with a very long wrench, who engineered it is a psycho
Since Dante wrote _The Inferno_, there has been a circle in Hell added where car designers are endlessly changing the spark plugs on AMC Javelins, bleeding brakes on Ford Escorts, and similar maintenance tasks which the design made more difficult than is reasonable.
I had a 2004 Citroen, which needed the front sidelight bulb replacing, after investigating for 20 minutes, decided to ask the garage how much it would cost next time it was in.
I left my Citroen to my mom, and my stepfather has calculated that a light bulb costs 3€, having the light bulb mounted by the mechanic costs 5€ ( including the bulb ), so to save up 2€ he decided ( with good cause ) that he will never replace the bulb himself cause it's extremely infuriating.
I did manage to replace those bulbs myself, and it's ridiculous, it has some sort of spring to hold it in place that is extremely hard to open with your fingers, and even harder to close. And on top of that you can't even see it, you have to take first pictures with your phone, understand how it works and then go entirely by tactic feedback
In this case, I couldn't see how to get at the bulb without either losing lots of skin or dismantling half the front end of the car - so I was happy to pay the half hour rate they charged. I believe they went in from below the car with something to reach it and mirrors.
Define "modern". I have a 2017 Civic and I've had to replace the battery a couple of times. There's a holding bar that needs to be removed before the battery can be taken out, but other than that the only real problem is the weight of the thing.
In general it looks like these kinds of changes are trying to make it harder for people to do this kind of basic maintenance themselves. Force you to go to the dealer.
I recommend to never go to the dealer, unless you're going there for a warranty or recall repair. A local repair shop is always the better option. And if you don't know of a trustworthy local shop, take it to the dealer for an estimate, and then you know if the local shops are bullshitting you (they should come in way under dealer prices).
While increasing dealer revenue is a plausible goal, it also seems plausible that reducing production cost could cause awkward maintenance. It is even plausible that only the bill of materials would be considered, though the feedback loop for increasing assembly cost is much tighter and less noisy that the loop of end-user dissatisfaction with maintenance issues.
Even within an organization, creating externalities from one department's perspective seems common enough.
Even if a decision maker is aware of the possibility of externalities and cares about a broader constituency (temporal or "spatial"), evaluating actual costs is an expense as is justifying that investigation expense and any mitigation/avoidance expenses to others in the decision web.
What if there's an efficiency in engine design by placing the filter in the middle that leads to a +2mpg improvement for the driver? Or that it fails, on average, 22k miles later into it's life? Not all hard-to-repair-yourself designs are malicious...
Right but what I'm getting at is that there can be tradeoffs that might make designing for maintainability mean optimizing for something less important to the end user.
Do you optimize an engine for how easy it is to replace a filter once or twice a year (most likely done by someone the average car-owner is already paying to change their oil for them), or do you optimize it for getting better gas mileage over every single mile the car is driven?
We're talking about a hypothetical car and neither of us (I assume) design engines like this, I'm just trying to illustrate a point about tradeoffs existing. To your own point of efficiency being a trade with durability, that's not in a vacuum. If a part is in a different location with a different loading environment, it can be more/less durable (material changes leading to efficiency differences), more/less likely to break (maybe you service the hard-to-service part half as often when it's in a harder to service spot), etc.
Only TCO matters, that is the efficiency you actually optimize for, ie dollar per mile[1]not miles per gallon.
If the car is going to need to be in shop for days needing you to have a replacement rental because the model is difficult to service and the cost of service itself is not cheap , that can easily outweigh any marginal mpg gain .
Similarly because it is expensive and time consuming you may likely skip service schedules , the engine will then have a reduced life, or seizes up on the road and you need an expensive tow and rebuild etc .
You are implicitly assuming none of these will change if the maintenance is more difficult , that is not the case though
This is what OP is implying when he says a part with regular maintenance schedule to be easily accessible.
[1] of which fuel is only one part , substantial yes but not the only one
> Only TCO matters, that is the efficiency you actually optimize for, ie dollar per mile[1]not miles per gallon.
You’d be surprised how few people actually consider TCO when looking at vehicles, the amount of people driving Jeeps and Audis and similar vehicles that depreciate 60-70% in 5-6 years blows my mind, I just assume anyone driving a car like that hates money.
I bought a RAV4 for $32,000 in 2021, a co-worker of mine paid just over $60k for a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe the same year, and the model years are the same. 5 years later, my car is worth more than his (around 22k, his is 18-20k), he ate over $40,000 of depreciation in 5 years, that’s just insane to me.
I'm just gonna copy and paste a response to another similar comment:
The point that I am making (obviously, I think) is that tradeoffs exist, even if you don't think the right decision was made, your full view into the trade space is likely incomplete, or prioritizes something different than the engineers.
Putting some random number of hypothetical mpg improvement was clearly a mistake, but I assumed people here would be able to get the point I was trying to make, instead of getting riled up about the relationship (or lack thereof) of oil filters and fuel efficiency.
I did read that before commenting, to be clear - the specific nature of your proposed optimization is not important and I took your premise to be true ie it will improve fuel efficiency and therefore save some money.
—
In general, the point was it is not operational efficiency in ideal conditions alone and serviceability is an important component because it can add to the overall cost of ownership significantly and individual car owners (in comparison to fleet) are typically poorer in factoring this in their buy decisions.
——
It comes down to numbers , if the proposed change, results in 10% improvement probably not worth it, 10x then definitely so .
I.e will the car become 22 MPGe or 200MPGe . Larger the gain more trade-offs like serviceability or life expectancy all can be sacrificed.
hybrids costs more upfront (both sets of expensive components - transmission/motor +engine/battery) but still work if driven enough miles, as the gain in efficiency makes up for the upfront.
Exact number of that miles is localized to you and me - depends things like tax difference including tolls, gas prices, MPGe diff, electricity prices, interest and purchasing power of currency other consumables costs like tires and so on.
If the engine failed due to missing oil change because of the difficulty, the whole car is gone. The waste in cost, material, and environmental impact far outweighs the savings in 2mpg improvement.
Glad to know in this hypothetical car scenario the owner decided to not get an oil change leading to the total loss of the vehicle. That seems very realistic and definitely something that car designs should be optimized around.
Or, we consider that 2mpg across 100,000 cars can save 3,500,000 gallons of gas being burned for the average American driving ~12k miles per year. And maybe things aren't so black and white. You're argument, in this hypothetical, is that negligent car owner who destroys their car because they're choosing to not change the oil is worth burning an extra 3.5millon gallons of gasoline.
I'm using this hypothetical to illustrate the point that: tradeoffs exist, and that you (we) may not have full insight into the full complexity of the trade space that the engineers were working with.
Putting some random number of hypothetical mpg improvement was clearly a mistake, but I assumed people here would be able to get the point I was trying to make, instead of getting riled up about the relationship (or lack thereof) of oil filters and fuel efficiency.
And he's using his hypothetical to illustrate the point that: even while some benefits may exist, there are other considerations besides one measure of efficiency.
That's the point you're not getting. People get your point. They're just pointing out that sometimes the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And for something that needs to be regularly accessed, it's better for it to be accessible than strictly optimal.
And during the whole debacle, you've demonstrated that you don't have much insight to the trade space at all. And you're so dead set on "not being wrong" here that now you're accusing everyone around you of being riled up. We're chill, dude. We're starting to worry about you.
> there are other considerations besides one measure of efficiency
Bruh that's literally what I was saying? Instead of how efficiently can you replace a filter in an engine, another benefit might exist instead. Said another way, maybe the "juice" gained from redesigning a fuel filter system instead of using an existing one form another car wasn't worth the "squeeze" of cost and development for the company.
Kinda feels like maybe you (the majority of replies to my original message) didn't get the point, and instead took this as some literal suggestion that I think engines need to have filters in certain spots.
The fact that so many people took this as literally as they did, and seemingly chose to ignore the underlying message of "hey maybe consider tradeoffs exist" makes me start to worry about you too.
No, you were saying that accessibility is subservient to efficiency.
And you were explicitly told several times that your hypothetical efficiency just does not exist. So constantly saying, "Yeah, but what if" looks like you're being obstinate for its own sake.
If the majority of people "didn't get your point", consider that maybe you aren't great at getting your point across.
> No, you were saying that accessibility is subservient to efficiency
Where do you believe I said that?
I don't recall saying anywhere that efficiency should be a priority over accessibility. I said "what if" to create a hypothetical to demonstrate that it could be. You know, trying to introduce nuance to a conversation. You can read that as obstinance for its own sake if you want.
My hypothetical not existing doesn't mean that some similar scenario isn't true. That's kind of the point of a hypothetical, it's an imaginary example to demonstrate a point. My suggestion that fuel efficiency could be effected may not be correct, but the efficiency of using a pre-existing design to save on new parts/labor very likely is true.
Again, people choosing to latch onto a hypothetical and tear that down instead of treating it like a tool for illustrating a point like it's intended to be is really odd and related to:
> If the majority of people "didn't get your point", consider that maybe you aren't great at getting your point across.
As I've said in other replies, I've already noted this- a specific mention of a hypothetical 2mpg that seems to really have distracted people lol
This is like saying you can get a 10% improvement in battery life by changing where you position the RAM on your motherboard.
There is just no universe in which placing an oil filter in one location or another is going to make such a difference. You'd have to mount it completely outside the engine, say sitting as a cylinder on top of the hood, and even there you are not going to get a 2mpg improvement.
Sorry we're talking about a hypothetical car engine, and as an analogy to software development. I'm not an expert in designing car engines like you, but acting like this example being not fully realistic is some kind of "gotcha" for the point I'm making is really frustrating.
The point that I am making (obviously, I think) is that tradeoffs exist, even if you don't think the right decision was made, your full view into the trade space is likely incomplete, or prioritizes something different than the engineers.
Based on the replies, saying there's a hypothetical 2mpg improvement to be had was a mistake, everyone is latching on to that like there's some actual engine we're investigating.
You made a "well actually" comment in which you demonstrated your lack of knowledge on the topic, _and_ stated a truism which didn't apply to the thing you were replying to.
Yes, I'm sure most people on this website have ran into seemingly bad design choices which made sense once they knew more context. But that doesn't mean that all bad design choices are like this.
Specifically dumb oil filter placement is an example of such a case where the _only_ legitimate justification is design cost saving for the manufacturer (re-using an existing design meant for a different car).
You can maybe argue that saving on design costs (and I guess also re-tooling costs) is a saving that gets passed onto the consumer. But that consumer is unlikely to feel like they're saving much money when cars depreciate faster than ice cubes in the desert, and when their oil change is 2+ times more expensive every 6 months. Really that cost savings will only really benefit the manufacturer (well, at least until they tarnish their reputation).
> Yes, I'm sure most people on this website have ran into seemingly bad design choices which made sense once they knew more context. But that doesn't mean that all bad design choices are like this.
I'm literally just saying the yin to this yang. Just because you run into a design that feels malicious doesn't mean that it always is.
Again, sorry for the sin of trying to make an analogy/example of something I'm not an expert in. You can rest easy at night knowing I'll never do it again.
You also pretty neatly laid out how re-using an existing design meant for a different car leads to some benefits to the end customer. Sure the full cost savings don't ever make it to the buyer, but there's still net wins in not spinning up new manufacturing processes (as you say). So I'm not sure why you're coming at this so combatively? Because I dared float the idea that maybe it's an engine efficiency thing we're unaware of, instead of part re-use cost/lead time efficiency improvement? Again, sorry for stepping outside of my lane...
No, the point is that the GP statement missed the point. Say we hear about a company laying off 10% of workers, and someone says "What if they needed to lay off those workers in order to meet their HIPAA obligations and protect user privacy?" Now clearly that would be an argument that is either bad faith, or just spectacularly uninformed. We do not then go on to discuss the relative importance of HIPAA compliance versus employment. The reason companies lay off workers is because of a decline in market demand or efforts at cost cutting. That is the reason. It's not to help the environment. It's not to protect customer data. It's not because this is the year of the Pig. Anyone who makes those arguments should get responded to in a way to clearly points out it is a specious argument.
The reason why automakers place serviceable parts in bad locations is due to either incompetence (If you are, say, Bentley) or malicious design (almost everyone else) -- e.g. they do not prioritize serviceability. Car makers really hate that ordinary people can repair their own vehicles. There were proposals in the 1960s to try to lock shut the hood so that car owners wouldn't be able to open it and service the cars on their own. Hyundai just announced that they will not allow car owners to retract their own parking brakes when they want to replace brake pads. You need a login with a website and prove that you are a professional mechanic before you can retract your own parking brakes. This is done, ostensibly, for "cyber security" reasons. But the real reason is that Hyundai does not want people to be able to service their own cars, they want you to take the car to a dealer. They also are not fans of independent mechanics, they would prefer if everyone that touched the car had a business relationship with Hyundai and was under contract with them. The fact that you can work on your car is an endless source of pain for manufacturers, and when they repeatedly make it hard to work on your car, or try to lock down parts so that you can't pull an old seat heater from the junkyard and use it to replace your own failed seat heater -- that is all part of the war on independent repair.
So what should be discussed is the environment of hostility to serviceability, everything from insisting that transmission oil is "lifetime" to forcing you to pay money to the manufacturer if you want to read the data from your sensors, or making it extremely hard to do simple things like changing a headlight or replacing a battery. All of that is part of the same issue, which is hostility to end user repair. It has nothing to do with improving gas mileage, or ending world hunger, or celebrating the Year of the Pig. These are all equally specious arguments.
We don't have magic oil filters which last even 22k miles. You should be replacing them every 6 months / 6k miles, or 12 months / 12k miles depending on your risk tolerance (some people suggest even half my short interval).
Anyone who actually drives their car regularly will be doing an oil change at least twice a year. If an oil change takes more than 30 minutes of actual labour time of an inexperienced mechanic, it's going to be a serious financial burden which will likely outweigh any 2mpg improvement.
I’m no mechanical engineer, but I would assume those extreme tradeoffs occur more often when repairability is not prioritized from early iterations. I.e. “boss we’re 90% into the design cycle why are you bringing up the position of the oil filter now?”
There’s definitely a programming equivalent as well…
I've worked at some of the "top tier" finance firms over the years.
It is absolutely astounding how much of them run on code that is:
- very reliable aka it almost never breaks/fails
- written in ways that makes you wonder what series of events led to such awful code
For example:
- A deployment system that used python to read and respond to raw HTTP requests. If you triggered a deployment, you had to leave the webpage open as the deployment code was in the HTTP serving code
- A workflow manager that had <1000 lines of code but commits from 38 different people as the ownership always got passed to whoever the newest, most junior person on the team was
- Python code written in Java OOP style where every function call had to be traced up and down through four levels of abstraction
I mention this only b/c the "LLMs write shitty code" isn't quite the insult/blocker that people think it is. Humans write TONS of awful but working code too.
> But when you run your code in production, the KISS mantra takes on a new dimension. It’s not just about code anymore; it’s about reducing the moving parts and understanding their failure modes.
This sentence, itself, takes on new meaning in the age of agentic coding. "I'm fine with treating this new feature as greenfield even if it reimplements existing code, because the LLM will handle ensuring the new code meets biz and user expectations" is fine in isolation... but it may mean that the code does not benefit from shared patterns for observability, traffic shaping, debugging, and more.
And if the agent inlines code that itself had a bug, that later proves to be a root cause, the amount of code that needs to be found and fixed in an outage situation is not only larger but more inscrutable.
Using the OOP's terminology, where biz > user > ops > dev is ideal, this is a dev > ops style failure that goes far beyond "runs on my machine" towards a notion of "is only maintainable in isolation."
Luckily, we have 1M context windows now! We can choose to say: "Meticulously explore the full codebase for ways we might be able to refactor this prototype to reuse existing functionality, patterns, and services, with an eye towards maintainability by other teams." But that requires discipline, foresight, and clock-time.
Clearly, there is a thing missing here: Regulations. If you have strong regulations on how you can make money, you cannot sustainably have biz antagonize user. So in that case biz just becomes a filter for users that actually are willing (and able) to fund your software. That's a good thing.
Obviously, our regulations aren't perfect or even good enough yet. See DRM. See spyware TVs. See "who actually gets to control your device?". But still...
Oh noe, noe no.. you want to crowdsource debugging.. describe the error and your expectations, then build software by machine learning while screwing up.
102 comments
I did manage to replace those bulbs myself, and it's ridiculous, it has some sort of spring to hold it in place that is extremely hard to open with your fingers, and even harder to close. And on top of that you can't even see it, you have to take first pictures with your phone, understand how it works and then go entirely by tactic feedback
The battery is in a compartment in the left front wheel well. You have to remove that wheel to access the battery.
I was instantly impressed by the pure creativity and artistic expression the team employed for that design.
> Force you to go to the dealer.
I recommend to never go to the dealer, unless you're going there for a warranty or recall repair. A local repair shop is always the better option. And if you don't know of a trustworthy local shop, take it to the dealer for an estimate, and then you know if the local shops are bullshitting you (they should come in way under dealer prices).
Even within an organization, creating externalities from one department's perspective seems common enough.
Even if a decision maker is aware of the possibility of externalities and cares about a broader constituency (temporal or "spatial"), evaluating actual costs is an expense as is justifying that investigation expense and any mitigation/avoidance expenses to others in the decision web.
All of them have been in Ford (or Saturn).
Most maintainability conflicts come from packaging and design for assembly.
Efficiency more often comes into conflict with durability, and sometimes safety.
Do you optimize an engine for how easy it is to replace a filter once or twice a year (most likely done by someone the average car-owner is already paying to change their oil for them), or do you optimize it for getting better gas mileage over every single mile the car is driven?
We're talking about a hypothetical car and neither of us (I assume) design engines like this, I'm just trying to illustrate a point about tradeoffs existing. To your own point of efficiency being a trade with durability, that's not in a vacuum. If a part is in a different location with a different loading environment, it can be more/less durable (material changes leading to efficiency differences), more/less likely to break (maybe you service the hard-to-service part half as often when it's in a harder to service spot), etc.
If the car is going to need to be in shop for days needing you to have a replacement rental because the model is difficult to service and the cost of service itself is not cheap , that can easily outweigh any marginal mpg gain .
Similarly because it is expensive and time consuming you may likely skip service schedules , the engine will then have a reduced life, or seizes up on the road and you need an expensive tow and rebuild etc .
You are implicitly assuming none of these will change if the maintenance is more difficult , that is not the case though
This is what OP is implying when he says a part with regular maintenance schedule to be easily accessible.
[1] of which fuel is only one part , substantial yes but not the only one
> Only TCO matters, that is the efficiency you actually optimize for, ie dollar per mile[1]not miles per gallon.
You’d be surprised how few people actually consider TCO when looking at vehicles, the amount of people driving Jeeps and Audis and similar vehicles that depreciate 60-70% in 5-6 years blows my mind, I just assume anyone driving a car like that hates money.
I bought a RAV4 for $32,000 in 2021, a co-worker of mine paid just over $60k for a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe the same year, and the model years are the same. 5 years later, my car is worth more than his (around 22k, his is 18-20k), he ate over $40,000 of depreciation in 5 years, that’s just insane to me.
The point that I am making (obviously, I think) is that tradeoffs exist, even if you don't think the right decision was made, your full view into the trade space is likely incomplete, or prioritizes something different than the engineers.
Putting some random number of hypothetical mpg improvement was clearly a mistake, but I assumed people here would be able to get the point I was trying to make, instead of getting riled up about the relationship (or lack thereof) of oil filters and fuel efficiency.
—
In general, the point was it is not operational efficiency in ideal conditions alone and serviceability is an important component because it can add to the overall cost of ownership significantly and individual car owners (in comparison to fleet) are typically poorer in factoring this in their buy decisions.
——
It comes down to numbers , if the proposed change, results in 10% improvement probably not worth it, 10x then definitely so .
I.e will the car become 22 MPGe or 200MPGe . Larger the gain more trade-offs like serviceability or life expectancy all can be sacrificed.
hybrids costs more upfront (both sets of expensive components - transmission/motor +engine/battery) but still work if driven enough miles, as the gain in efficiency makes up for the upfront.
Exact number of that miles is localized to you and me - depends things like tax difference including tolls, gas prices, MPGe diff, electricity prices, interest and purchasing power of currency other consumables costs like tires and so on.
Or, we consider that 2mpg across 100,000 cars can save 3,500,000 gallons of gas being burned for the average American driving ~12k miles per year. And maybe things aren't so black and white. You're argument, in this hypothetical, is that negligent car owner who destroys their car because they're choosing to not change the oil is worth burning an extra 3.5millon gallons of gasoline.
We're already in the land of the fucking ridiculous. Let's have fun with it.
Putting some random number of hypothetical mpg improvement was clearly a mistake, but I assumed people here would be able to get the point I was trying to make, instead of getting riled up about the relationship (or lack thereof) of oil filters and fuel efficiency.
That's the point you're not getting. People get your point. They're just pointing out that sometimes the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And for something that needs to be regularly accessed, it's better for it to be accessible than strictly optimal.
And during the whole debacle, you've demonstrated that you don't have much insight to the trade space at all. And you're so dead set on "not being wrong" here that now you're accusing everyone around you of being riled up. We're chill, dude. We're starting to worry about you.
> there are other considerations besides one measure of efficiency
Bruh that's literally what I was saying? Instead of how efficiently can you replace a filter in an engine, another benefit might exist instead. Said another way, maybe the "juice" gained from redesigning a fuel filter system instead of using an existing one form another car wasn't worth the "squeeze" of cost and development for the company.
Kinda feels like maybe you (the majority of replies to my original message) didn't get the point, and instead took this as some literal suggestion that I think engines need to have filters in certain spots.
The fact that so many people took this as literally as they did, and seemingly chose to ignore the underlying message of "hey maybe consider tradeoffs exist" makes me start to worry about you too.
And you were explicitly told several times that your hypothetical efficiency just does not exist. So constantly saying, "Yeah, but what if" looks like you're being obstinate for its own sake.
If the majority of people "didn't get your point", consider that maybe you aren't great at getting your point across.
> No, you were saying that accessibility is subservient to efficiency
Where do you believe I said that?
I don't recall saying anywhere that efficiency should be a priority over accessibility. I said "what if" to create a hypothetical to demonstrate that it could be. You know, trying to introduce nuance to a conversation. You can read that as obstinance for its own sake if you want.
My hypothetical not existing doesn't mean that some similar scenario isn't true. That's kind of the point of a hypothetical, it's an imaginary example to demonstrate a point. My suggestion that fuel efficiency could be effected may not be correct, but the efficiency of using a pre-existing design to save on new parts/labor very likely is true.
Again, people choosing to latch onto a hypothetical and tear that down instead of treating it like a tool for illustrating a point like it's intended to be is really odd and related to:
> If the majority of people "didn't get your point", consider that maybe you aren't great at getting your point across.
As I've said in other replies, I've already noted this- a specific mention of a hypothetical 2mpg that seems to really have distracted people lol
There is just no universe in which placing an oil filter in one location or another is going to make such a difference. You'd have to mount it completely outside the engine, say sitting as a cylinder on top of the hood, and even there you are not going to get a 2mpg improvement.
The point that I am making (obviously, I think) is that tradeoffs exist, even if you don't think the right decision was made, your full view into the trade space is likely incomplete, or prioritizes something different than the engineers.
Based on the replies, saying there's a hypothetical 2mpg improvement to be had was a mistake, everyone is latching on to that like there's some actual engine we're investigating.
Yes, I'm sure most people on this website have ran into seemingly bad design choices which made sense once they knew more context. But that doesn't mean that all bad design choices are like this.
Specifically dumb oil filter placement is an example of such a case where the _only_ legitimate justification is design cost saving for the manufacturer (re-using an existing design meant for a different car).
You can maybe argue that saving on design costs (and I guess also re-tooling costs) is a saving that gets passed onto the consumer. But that consumer is unlikely to feel like they're saving much money when cars depreciate faster than ice cubes in the desert, and when their oil change is 2+ times more expensive every 6 months. Really that cost savings will only really benefit the manufacturer (well, at least until they tarnish their reputation).
> Yes, I'm sure most people on this website have ran into seemingly bad design choices which made sense once they knew more context. But that doesn't mean that all bad design choices are like this.
I'm literally just saying the yin to this yang. Just because you run into a design that feels malicious doesn't mean that it always is.
Again, sorry for the sin of trying to make an analogy/example of something I'm not an expert in. You can rest easy at night knowing I'll never do it again.
You also pretty neatly laid out how re-using an existing design meant for a different car leads to some benefits to the end customer. Sure the full cost savings don't ever make it to the buyer, but there's still net wins in not spinning up new manufacturing processes (as you say). So I'm not sure why you're coming at this so combatively? Because I dared float the idea that maybe it's an engine efficiency thing we're unaware of, instead of part re-use cost/lead time efficiency improvement? Again, sorry for stepping outside of my lane...
The reason why automakers place serviceable parts in bad locations is due to either incompetence (If you are, say, Bentley) or malicious design (almost everyone else) -- e.g. they do not prioritize serviceability. Car makers really hate that ordinary people can repair their own vehicles. There were proposals in the 1960s to try to lock shut the hood so that car owners wouldn't be able to open it and service the cars on their own. Hyundai just announced that they will not allow car owners to retract their own parking brakes when they want to replace brake pads. You need a login with a website and prove that you are a professional mechanic before you can retract your own parking brakes. This is done, ostensibly, for "cyber security" reasons. But the real reason is that Hyundai does not want people to be able to service their own cars, they want you to take the car to a dealer. They also are not fans of independent mechanics, they would prefer if everyone that touched the car had a business relationship with Hyundai and was under contract with them. The fact that you can work on your car is an endless source of pain for manufacturers, and when they repeatedly make it hard to work on your car, or try to lock down parts so that you can't pull an old seat heater from the junkyard and use it to replace your own failed seat heater -- that is all part of the war on independent repair.
So what should be discussed is the environment of hostility to serviceability, everything from insisting that transmission oil is "lifetime" to forcing you to pay money to the manufacturer if you want to read the data from your sensors, or making it extremely hard to do simple things like changing a headlight or replacing a battery. All of that is part of the same issue, which is hostility to end user repair. It has nothing to do with improving gas mileage, or ending world hunger, or celebrating the Year of the Pig. These are all equally specious arguments.
Anyone who actually drives their car regularly will be doing an oil change at least twice a year. If an oil change takes more than 30 minutes of actual labour time of an inexperienced mechanic, it's going to be a serious financial burden which will likely outweigh any 2mpg improvement.
There’s definitely a programming equivalent as well…
So, similar with software design, as in other fields, often a problem goes away when you ask a different question.
It is absolutely astounding how much of them run on code that is:
- very reliable aka it almost never breaks/fails
- written in ways that makes you wonder what series of events led to such awful code
For example:
- A deployment system that used python to read and respond to raw HTTP requests. If you triggered a deployment, you had to leave the webpage open as the deployment code was in the HTTP serving code
- A workflow manager that had <1000 lines of code but commits from 38 different people as the ownership always got passed to whoever the newest, most junior person on the team was
- Python code written in Java OOP style where every function call had to be traced up and down through four levels of abstraction
I mention this only b/c the "LLMs write shitty code" isn't quite the insult/blocker that people think it is. Humans write TONS of awful but working code too.
I am afraid that without a major crash or revolution of some sort, user won't matter next to a sufficiently big biz. But time will tell.
How could this have happened? Well, the code was shipped but no customer was running it in production.
> But when you run your code in production, the KISS mantra takes on a new dimension. It’s not just about code anymore; it’s about reducing the moving parts and understanding their failure modes.
This sentence, itself, takes on new meaning in the age of agentic coding. "I'm fine with treating this new feature as greenfield even if it reimplements existing code, because the LLM will handle ensuring the new code meets biz and user expectations" is fine in isolation... but it may mean that the code does not benefit from shared patterns for observability, traffic shaping, debugging, and more.
And if the agent inlines code that itself had a bug, that later proves to be a root cause, the amount of code that needs to be found and fixed in an outage situation is not only larger but more inscrutable.
Using the OOP's terminology, where biz > user > ops > dev is ideal, this is a dev > ops style failure that goes far beyond "runs on my machine" towards a notion of "is only maintainable in isolation."
Luckily, we have 1M context windows now! We can choose to say: "Meticulously explore the full codebase for ways we might be able to refactor this prototype to reuse existing functionality, patterns, and services, with an eye towards maintainability by other teams." But that requires discipline, foresight, and clock-time.
Obviously, our regulations aren't perfect or even good enough yet. See DRM. See spyware TVs. See "who actually gets to control your device?". But still...