We are using knowledge-storage and reference devices to expand our long-term “memory.” One concrete example is the list of long mathematical proofs, which I am certain nobody has memorized. Probably the details of large computer programs as well. The code for the human genome project was 3300 billion lines of code. Nobody has all that memorized, and some of the people who wrote it are probably dead.
One of humanity’s great technical arts is being able to store knowledge for later retrieval, and build mechanisms that keep working when nobody can explain exactly how. We’d have lost all that accumulated knowledge as well as the physical artifacts.
Fortunately, one of the great secrets of technical creation is that a mechanism can be built by tinkering without knowing exactly how they all fit together. My guess is that a lot of early engineering comes together without a grand plan, and the accumulation and refinement of tinkering eventually results in something that functions. Knowing what can be done, and having a lot of shared cultural knowledge about how to tinker productively, would give us a huge head start.
But unfortunately we’d all die of starvation and disease before we managed to get very far!
This cannot be true unless the vast, vast majority was generated by other programs, or you’re counting lines of code in some funny way. Even if each programmer was able to write a million lines of code ~10 years (note 100k lines of code in a year is nearly unheard of), that would require 3.3 million programmers; if they were paid $1M each over this timeframe, that would cost… $3.3T, or about as much as the Manhattan project World War 2.
I’m not sure if humanity in aggregate has produced 3.3 trillion lines of code. Probably yes, but it’s not obviously true.
Why do you believe the Manhattan project cost about $3.3T? Quick googling yields ~$20B in 2007 dollars.
Edit: further googling shows WWII costs about ~$4T, so maybe you confused the two numbers? I’m pretty surprised that the Manhattan project is only ~1% of the cost of WWII, so maybe something is going on.
You’re right, I was confusing World War costs with Manhattan project costs, sorry about that. (I didn’t really think about it, I mostly went “$3.3T, yup that’s completely out of the question” and posted the comment.)
The article cited is also wrong about the line counts for some of the other groups it mentions, google doesn’t have 2000 billion lines, according to their own metrics.
We are using knowledge-storage and reference devices to expand our long-term “memory.” One concrete example is the list of long mathematical proofs, which I am certain nobody has memorized. Probably the details of large computer programs as well.
The code for the human genome project was3300 billion lines of code.Nobody has all that memorized, and some of the people who wrote it are probably dead.One of humanity’s great technical arts is being able to store knowledge for later retrieval, and build mechanisms that keep working when nobody can explain exactly how. We’d have lost all that accumulated knowledge as well as the physical artifacts.
Fortunately, one of the great secrets of technical creation is that a mechanism can be built by tinkering without knowing exactly how they all fit together. My guess is that a lot of early engineering comes together without a grand plan, and the accumulation and refinement of tinkering eventually results in something that functions. Knowing what can be done, and having a lot of shared cultural knowledge about how to tinker productively, would give us a huge head start.
But unfortunately we’d all die of starvation and disease before we managed to get very far!
This cannot be true unless the vast, vast majority was generated by other programs, or you’re counting lines of code in some funny way. Even if each programmer was able to write a million lines of code ~10 years (note 100k lines of code in a year is nearly unheard of), that would require 3.3 million programmers; if they were paid $1M each over this timeframe, that would cost… $3.3T, or about as much as
the Manhattan projectWorld War 2.I’m not sure if humanity in aggregate has produced 3.3 trillion lines of code. Probably yes, but it’s not obviously true.
Why do you believe the Manhattan project cost about $3.3T? Quick googling yields ~$20B in 2007 dollars.
Edit: further googling shows WWII costs about ~$4T, so maybe you confused the two numbers? I’m pretty surprised that the Manhattan project is only ~1% of the cost of WWII, so maybe something is going on.
You’re right, I was confusing World War costs with Manhattan project costs, sorry about that. (I didn’t really think about it, I mostly went “$3.3T, yup that’s completely out of the question” and posted the comment.)
I’m getting my numbers from this appendix to this report.
Looking at https://usafacts.org/data/topics/economy/economic-indicators/gdp/gross-domestic-product/?adjustment=Inflation it looks like the USA’s GDP in 1944 was $3.1T in 2019 dollars, so the Manhattan project (even spread over four years) couldn’t be anywhere near $3.3T.
The article cited is also wrong about the line counts for some of the other groups it mentions, google doesn’t have 2000 billion lines, according to their own metrics.
I’m glad you thought this through. I just grabbed it as an example by Googling “longest computer programs” and using the first example that popped up.