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Software Friction

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141 points saikatsg | 2 comments | 17 Jun 24 06:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.414s | source
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WJW ◴[18 Jun 24 11:13 UTC] No.40716351[source]▶
> What about event planners, nurses, military officers?

As a Dutch ex-Navy officer, we just called this "friction" as everyone had read Von Clausewitz during officer training and was familiar with the nuances of the term. Militaries overwhelmingly address this problem by increasing redundancy, so that there are as few single points of failures as possible. It is very rare to encounter a role that can only be filled by a single person, a well designed military organization will always have a plan for replacing any single individual should they accidentally die.

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pjc50 ◴[18 Jun 24 12:23 UTC] No.40716962[source]▶
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men" -- attr. Napoleon

"I can make a brigadier general in five minutes, but it is not easy to replace a hundred and ten horses" -- attr. Lincoln (exact words vary by source)

It's noticeable how few computer wargames simulate any of this, instead allowing for frictionless high speed micromanagement.

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1. hibikir ◴[18 Jun 24 21:03 UTC] No.40722174[source]▶
Wargames tend to try to be fun, as opposed to being a realistic simulation of war. Imagine you are playing Napoleon at Ligny: How much fun is it that your reserves receive conflicting orders all day from a field marshal fighting in a different nearby battlefield, and that there are similar town names in the map, leading to your troops coming in late and in a useless location?

You shouldn't even be able to watch the action in detail, Total War style, as you might have a hill, some messengers and low power binoculars. Games have attempted to copy this, but it's a curiosity, not something that brings sales

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2. Cthulhu_ ◴[19 Jun 24 08:51 UTC] No.40726250[source]▶
A lot of 4X games - including the Total War series - develop from being close to the fight and micromanaging forces, to zooming out to an empire view and letting the fights take place without your oversight; it's not the same but I'd say pretty similar? That is, even though you start and end as emperor over everything you control, you can choose how much micromanagement you do. Example is Stellaris, where you can either micromanage your forces, planets, ships, etc, or you can let them duke it out on their own, hand over micromanagement of your planets to governors by giving them high over targets, etc.