Data and Oil Analogy

codejet

One of the revelations that has come about as a result of covid-19 is that data is not the new oil. So many people working from have realised that bandwidth is the new oil. Data is just the vehicle.

kalberts

Which made me immediately associate to all those software developers grabbing every new language feature (or whatever feature) searching frenetically for some place to use it. The important thing is not solving a given problem more easily thanks to the new thing. What is important is to find some - no matter which one - code piece where they can display their mastery of this new feature. Who cares about solving problems? Having a long list of tools and techniques that you master is far more impressing on your CV that a varied list of actual real world problems you have solved during your programming career.

codejet

I just realised that I'm doing that right now. I have just started using extension methods and I'm trigger happy when it comes to using them.

kmoorevs

codejet wrote:

Data is just the vehicle.

Not sure I agree with that. I'd say that bandwidth is the pipeline. The bigger the pipeline the more oil/data you can transfer. Soon, underprivileged will be defined by the amount of buffering one must endure for those precious cat videos or episodes of the masked singer. :laugh: Covid-19 is like a bad software project...not enough testing to properly debug. :)

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

codejet

I just realised that I'm doing that right now. I have just started using extension methods and I'm trigger happy when it comes to using them.

codejet

I like you analogy. Kindly complete it for me. Pipeline - Bandwidth Oil - Data Vehicles - ?

kmoorevs

Hmmm...the pipeline moves the oil, the oil ultimately becomes fuel for a vehicle. The vehicle is the human interface. For data, the bandwidth is a characteristic of the network and the network(s) moves the data which ultimately is used by a device, possibly used by a human but not always. I suppose the receiving device might be considered the vehicle. :)

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

Mark_Wallace

Ducks float. Oil floats. BURN THE W--- ... Oh. Maybe not.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

dandy72

Agreed that the analogy is flawed. I have a slow connection (5mbps), but frankly I've learned to live with it, I don't stream video (or at least not HD) at the same time I'm downloading anything, and frankly there isn't much I can't do--the data gets around despite my lack of bandwidth. I *believe* last time I checked with my ISP I could get 15mbps, but honestly I have a hard time justifying the monthly price difference (and one-time upgrade fee, which is ridiculous because they don't have anything to do on their end except change settings through software to make it happen).