Comment by subhro
2 days ago
I just can’t resist myself when airplanes come up in discussion.
I completely understand your analogy and you are right. However just to nitpick, it is actually super important to have a weight on the airplane at the right place. You have to make sure that your aeroplane does not become tail heavy or it is not recoverable from a stall. Also a heavier aeroplane, within its gross weight, is actually safer as the safe manoeuverable speed increases with weight.
I think this makes the analogy even more apt.
If someone adds more code to the wrong places for the sake of adding more code, the software may not be recoverable for future changes or from bugs. You also often need to add code in the right places for robustness.
> a heavier aeroplane … is actually safer
Just to nitpick your nitpick, that’s only true up to a point, and the range of safe weights isn’t all that big really - max payload on most planes is a fraction of the empty weight. And planes can be overweight, reducing weight is a good thing and perhaps needed far more often than adding weight is needed. The point of the analogy was that over a certain weight, the plane doesn’t fly at all. If progress on a plane is safety, stability, or speed, we can measure those things directly. If weight distribution is important to those, that’s great we can measure weight and distribution in service of stability, but weight isn’t the primary thing we use.
Like with airplane weight, you absolutely need some code to get something done, and sometimes more is better. But is more better as a rule? Absolutely not.
right, thats why its a great analogy - because you also need to have at least some code in a successful piece of software. But simply measuring by the amount of code leads to weird and perverse incentives - code added without thought is not good, and too much code can itself be a problem. Of course, the literal balancing aspect isn't as important.
This is a pretty narrow take on aviation safety. A heavier airplane has a higher stall speed, more energy for the brakes to dissipate, longer takeoff/landing distances, a worse climb rate… I’ll happily sacrifice maneuvering speed for better takeoff/landing/climb performance.
Again, just nitpicking, but if you have the right approach speed, and not doing a super short field landing, you need very little wheel brake if any. ;)
Sure, as long as you stick to flying light aircraft on runways designed for commercial air transport. I would also recommend thinking about how you would control speed on a long downhill taxi with a tailwind, even if you didn’t need brakes on landing.
> the safe manoeuverable speed increases with weight
The reason this is true is because at a higher weight, you'll stall at max deflection before you can put enough stress on the airframe to be a problem. That is to say, at a given speed a heavier airplane will fall out of the air [hyperbole, it will merely stall - significantly reduced lift] before it can rip the wings/elevator off [hyperbole - damage the airframe]. That makes it questionable whether heavier is safer - just changes the failure mode.
> That is to say, at a given speed a heavier airplane will fall out of the air [hyperbole, it will merely stall - significantly reduced lift] before it can rip the wings/elevator off [hyperbole - damage the airframe]
Turbulence, especially generated by thunderstorms, or close to it.
Maneuvering speed is Va which is about max deflection on a single control surface, I think you're thinking of Vno if you're referring to turbulence
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