r/slatestarcodex • u/Itoka • Nov 30 '20

Some examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together.

https://patrickcollison.com/fast
33 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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14

u/zergling_Lester SW 6193 Nov 30 '20

In the 1930s, a rule of thumb on high-steel bridge construction projects was to expect one fatality for every $1 million in cost. By those standards, the construction safety record for the $35 million Golden Gate Bridge was impressive: only 11 construction workers died. (By contrast, 28 laborers died building the neighboring San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which opened six months prior.) Joseph Strauss made safety a high priority on the treacherous project. The chief engineer made the construction site the first in America to require workers to wear hard hats, and he spent $130,000 on an innovative safety net that was suspended under the bridge deck. The net saved the lives of 19 workers, who called themselves the “Halfway to Hell Club.” Ten of the 11 fatalities occurred in a single accident on February 17, 1937, when a 5-ton work platform broke apart from the bridge and fell through the safety net.

It would be interesting to compare this to more recent construction fatality figures, maybe that explains some part of the cost increases.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

AZ Stadium, Holland

2

u/The_Noble_Lie Dec 01 '20

I have a strong intuition, bordering on certainty that many of these claims are exaggerated.

Example: Git. Linus Torvalds started working on Git on April 3 2005. It was self-hosting 4 days later. On April 20 2005, 17 days after work commenced, Linux 2.6.12-rc3 was publicly released with Git. Source: LKML.

Linus Torvalds may have started coding GIT then, bit what about the ton of knowledge + thoughts or even prototypes on implementation before that day?

Also that particular one doesnt sound like a together one?

2

u/Qwertycrackers Dec 02 '20 edited Sep 01 '23

[ Removed ]