Comment by dahart

3 days ago

> 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.