> messing around with hardware vs software. Back when I was doing some hands-on practical training in electric engineering school, we had to design a control c

> messing around with hardware vs software. Back when I was doing some hands-on practical training in electric engineering school, we had to design a control circuit on some breadboard, the kind that in high school would lit a couple of leds, and maybe make a light fade, but here it was driving a big-ass train engine boxed in a 1.5m x 1.5m x 3m steel cage, right next to the bench where we pieced the control device together, barely arms length away. While conceptually the same, "theory" vs "practice" and "command" vs "power" suddenly takes a whole new meaning where you're suddenly pushing several orders of magnitude more power than a puny 9V battery could. The buzzing of a hundred amps ready to flow inches away was chillingly ominous. You get a strange urge to triple check, quad check even, design and calculations before flicking the switch. As we all successfully started up our bench, the rumbling of a dozen of these bare protomachines revving up in a hangar was eerie. The thought of them sucking in such an amount of overall power from the grid dizzying. I rarely get cold-sweat and goose bumps, but this was one of these days.