Recently I dove head-first into robotics, specifically looking at building a 3D printer or CNC machine. Yesterday I read an article about backlash which had an interesting insight about “Engineering” vs. “Hacking” from a engineer’s standpoint, and whether an inaccurate build is actually “bad.” The insight in the article was that hacking is engineering, just engineering to much larger tolerances. In mechanics, tolerance is a measure of effectively how “off” something can be. E.g. a length of pipe must be within +/- 0.01 inches of its intended length to do the job. Just like a web application must do X, Y, and Z to do its job. In the case of a rough prototype, the pipe might work fine as long as it’s within 1" of the intended length. Or in the case of a web app, maybe 50% of feature X, Y, and Z is enough to demonstrate the concept. As long as the tolerances meet the intended purpose, the engineering is sound. Was an interesting way to look at this and whether “hacking” is bad or not. Effectively, there is no such thing as hacking (although, there IS such a thing as just plain bad code…)
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