Old things, cars especially, we're built by engineers who knew they would break, and they prioritized repairability in their design philosophy.
Newer machines are designed not to be fixed, but to be thrown away and replaced.
Discussion
Also less over-optimization and more redundancy because they were humble to what they couldn’t model. So things were less fragile.
Yep agreed. We should bring back repairability. It's part of freedom technology.
Give me an example of a car that was made like that
My 1988 Lincoln town car.
My 1996 F-150
My 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee
All easy af to work on. I could swap an alternator in the Towncar in under 10 minutes.
Now I go to wrench on any modern FWD car and it's a nightmare. Covers over everything. Specialty security bit screws. Electronic sensors everywhere.
There were over 200,000 Lincoln Town cars made in 1988 alone. How many of the 1988 model still exist today?
1st of all, i still see them driving around periodically, i doubt we will see many 2025 cars still on the road in the year 2062.
But that's not my argument. Im just pointing out that a shade tree mechanic could keep those cars on the road for cheap. Modern cars aren't built like that, they're built to be brought to a specialist and totalled out for insurance.
Unpopular opinion from someone who spent nearly a decade working for one of the world's biggest powertrain development departments:
old cars were actually really terrible and we're all lucky to have modern tech
It's also just an unfair comparison. Old cars hardly had any functionality. They were like small steam trains, except you'd shovel in gasoline instead of coal.
If you cut a modern car down to that primitive state, it would also be easy to repair. But nobody would want it.
Not true. People love light duty trucks and little compact stripped down cars. The manufacturers just can't sell em due to government regulations.
Sure. But that doesn't mean they were made to last. It just means that they were easy to repair. Because of the old tech, they broke more frequently than the newer tech. And things had to be replaced to keep it going.
Most of the old car parts are super rough in terms of precision. It's like how the hinge design has evolved in foldable phones. It's just a matter of better tooling over time creates better products that last longer (if the manufacturer wants it).
But the point is that, it's not because it is old that things were designed to last. A bunch of crap didn't survive.
I just wanna be able to swap the starter or alternator in my own car in a reasonable amount of time with basic tools in my own garage. I don't think that's too much to ask.
What code is easier to debug and fix:
Code written by a 25 year veteran
Code vibed by a kid with some Claude credits
AI code is almost always easier to understand and debug than any human I have worked with.
I hate what this says about the human code you've worked with.
Fair enough. I haven't written much code but I doubt you've done much car repair either. Trust me when I say theyre making it harder to fix your own shit, and I believe theyre doing it on purpose.
This car was a good car that was repairable. Eventually the government got involved.
Mercedes W123.
https://blossom.primal.net/4a6701a7376150570d4be7230b31410e01a5128019d903217eec5ed64fb59e2b.mp4
Oberklassenmodell. That's like referencing a Bentley. 🤣
I think more people were driving a Trabbi.
Only in eastern Germany naturally. This one was peak engineering.
Yeah, totally unfair.
Don't claim a Porsche Carrera, next. 🤣
Beautiful car 😅. One time in the early 90s when Porsche wasn't doing well Mercedes produced a car in their facilities. The 500E. Audi did the same a couple of years later.
Today, engines are built in China. And Chinese cars themselves are probably superior to modern German cars.
I wish they start building things that last again.