I’m biking east along Interstate 80 and today I left Illinois and entered Indiana.
This is the closest I-80 gets to Lake Michigan, so I wanted to see what the lakeshore looks like, and I discovered US Steel Gary Works.
This is a huge steel plant. Wikipedia says for many years this was the world’s largest steel mill.
There’s something about super large factories that are awe-inspiring. It’s an icon of engineering might of mankind. The size of the structure, the vast space, the amount of money and labor it must have taken to build it, it’s all mind boggling.
Steel mills are special, among all the super large factories. I still remember one in Tokyo that I visited when I was in primary school. The whole grade level took a bus trip. There was a huge hot rolling machine and a red hot metal bar the size of a car (I think) came in and got gradually pressed into a thin metal roll. As it got thinner the speed went up. When that much mass moves at that much speed, you feel it, even from afar. And oh the heat. That was a great experience.
I wish we could show the source code in a similarly awe-inspiring manner to children. I bet it’ll make software engineering a lot more popular.