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This kind of brilliant work makes me feel very very tiny as an engineer. I struggle after work to find time to learn basic Rust. I’m totally in awe of folks who

This kind of brilliant work makes me feel very very tiny as an engineer. I struggle after work to find time to learn basic Rust. I’m totally in awe of folks who can do this kind of stuff. It’s just so impressive, and maybe one day I can benefit from all this awesome work.

gigatexal 5y ago
Same. People who can easily straddle the lowest level bits of a machine and also write performant and good c code and then to do all of that and reverse engineer things, amazing.
hivacruz 5y ago
I feel you. Sometimes I browse projects on GitHub and I'm astonished by what people can do and I can't. Example, OpenCore[0], a famous bootloader in the Hackintosh scene. How can people even start to code this.. Awewome work, awesome people. [0]: https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg
- sho_hn 5y ago
  Preface: I can't do this (specifically). But I have done many types of software development across two decades. My journey began with LAMP-style web work, took me to C++ and the desktop (apps, GUI toolkits, browser engines), then to embedded - from smart TVs to smart speakers, to network protocols for drone systems and beefy car infotainment ECUs and lower-level microcontroller/borderline electronics work. My conclusion: You can get into just about anything, and for the most part the difficulty level is fairly uniform. But there's simply a vast sea of domain-specific spec knowledge out there. It doesn't mean that it's too hard for you or you can't learn it. Anything that is done at scale will fundamentally be approachable by most developers. Just be prepared you'll need to put in the time to acquire a familiarity with the local standards/specs and ways of doing things. Knowledge turns seemingly hard things into easy things, and if it's been done before chances are it's documented somewhere. The truly hard stuff is innovating/doing things that haven't been done before. Novel development happens rarely.
  - cmurf 5y ago
    >acquire a familiarity with the local standards/specs And with the bugs. Especially with bootloaders because you're in a preboot environment.
  - bartvk 5y ago
    Yeah, this is my conclusion too. I moved from the Oracle platform to embedded, scientific stuff like reading out custom electronics for IR cameras. And now I'm into iOS apps. It's more a question of what part of the stack feels interesting and doable to you, at a certain period in your professional life.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  I ve done a bittorrent client, a 3D rendering engine on the PS3 and a printer driver for fun and while clearly not at the levels of a bootloader, I can have a few cookie points in interview for originality. What I learned starting these daunting task (especially the ps3 which was closed specs), is that it s still done by humans and following familiar patterns. Most of the time you bang your head against unclear doc or go through successive layers of abstraction (to do a ps3 rendering engine, better know your basic openGL on PC, which is only possible if you know matrix and vector geometry) but EVERYTHING is possible to reach at a workable level (expert level I feel comes with money incentive, team mates and repetition). I spent 2 years on japanese, 3 hours a day, and could integrate the meaning of Haikus at the end. I think the only true talent you must have is insane stubborness. To go through, a doc at a time. Usually after the first insane challenge (for me: learning english at a near native level, reading literature or discussing politics) of your life, you understand it s all pretty much time investment.
  - sauntheninja 5y ago
    Did you use PSLIght SDK to develop the rendering engine on the PS3?
- gitgud 5y ago
  It can be daunting to look at a popular project in it's current state. Thankfully with Open Source Projects you can go back in time and see how the code evolved. Here's [1] the first few commits to OpenCore. Much more approachable and inspiring. [1] https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/commits/master?after=e8338d8180d0dfcb025a4c8cc5cf542ea9d37e09+0&branch=master https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/commits/master?af...
ostenning 5y ago
Re: finding time. I think this is true for all of life, as we get older our risk and reward profiles change. As we are encumbered by more responsibility, family, mortgage, etc, we stop taking the same risks and start playing life more “safely” or “securely”. Of course it doesn't have to be that way and I personally advocate for a debt free lifestyle for this reason. Too many times have we heard the story of the midlife crisis: the false deity of security and comfort that robs the well paid executive the majority of his or her life. Its a sad story. So my advice is to people is to work less for others and work more for your own projects and passions, life is simply too short to give your years to someone else, even if it pays well.
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  I generally agree with you but total debt free life is suckery IMO when you are paid 90% by others people debt. It's better to take debt and profit from it (so invest and not consume, at least in current econ climate).
ip26 5y ago
Building useful and nonporous layers of abstractions and being able to quickly shift between them seems to be a key skill. When each layer leverages another, you can rapidly build something impressive. This in turn implies apart from technical skill, charting a good course from layer to layer can make a big difference, vs meandering without quite knowing where you are going.

gigatexal 5y ago

Same. People who can easily straddle the lowest level bits of a machine and also write performant and good c code and then to do all of that and reverse engineer things, amazing.

hivacruz 5y ago

I feel you. Sometimes I browse projects on GitHub and I'm astonished by what people can do and I can't. Example, OpenCore[0], a famous bootloader in the Hackintosh scene. How can people even start to code this.. Awewome work, awesome people. [0]: https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg

sho_hn 5y ago
Preface: I can't do this (specifically). But I have done many types of software development across two decades. My journey began with LAMP-style web work, took me to C++ and the desktop (apps, GUI toolkits, browser engines), then to embedded - from smart TVs to smart speakers, to network protocols for drone systems and beefy car infotainment ECUs and lower-level microcontroller/borderline electronics work. My conclusion: You can get into just about anything, and for the most part the difficulty level is fairly uniform. But there's simply a vast sea of domain-specific spec knowledge out there. It doesn't mean that it's too hard for you or you can't learn it. Anything that is done at scale will fundamentally be approachable by most developers. Just be prepared you'll need to put in the time to acquire a familiarity with the local standards/specs and ways of doing things. Knowledge turns seemingly hard things into easy things, and if it's been done before chances are it's documented somewhere. The truly hard stuff is innovating/doing things that haven't been done before. Novel development happens rarely.
- cmurf 5y ago
  >acquire a familiarity with the local standards/specs And with the bugs. Especially with bootloaders because you're in a preboot environment.
- bartvk 5y ago
  Yeah, this is my conclusion too. I moved from the Oracle platform to embedded, scientific stuff like reading out custom electronics for IR cameras. And now I'm into iOS apps. It's more a question of what part of the stack feels interesting and doable to you, at a certain period in your professional life.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
secondaryacct 5y ago
I ve done a bittorrent client, a 3D rendering engine on the PS3 and a printer driver for fun and while clearly not at the levels of a bootloader, I can have a few cookie points in interview for originality. What I learned starting these daunting task (especially the ps3 which was closed specs), is that it s still done by humans and following familiar patterns. Most of the time you bang your head against unclear doc or go through successive layers of abstraction (to do a ps3 rendering engine, better know your basic openGL on PC, which is only possible if you know matrix and vector geometry) but EVERYTHING is possible to reach at a workable level (expert level I feel comes with money incentive, team mates and repetition). I spent 2 years on japanese, 3 hours a day, and could integrate the meaning of Haikus at the end. I think the only true talent you must have is insane stubborness. To go through, a doc at a time. Usually after the first insane challenge (for me: learning english at a near native level, reading literature or discussing politics) of your life, you understand it s all pretty much time investment.
- sauntheninja 5y ago
  Did you use PSLIght SDK to develop the rendering engine on the PS3?
gitgud 5y ago
It can be daunting to look at a popular project in it's current state. Thankfully with Open Source Projects you can go back in time and see how the code evolved. Here's [1] the first few commits to OpenCore. Much more approachable and inspiring. [1] https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/commits/master?after=e8338d8180d0dfcb025a4c8cc5cf542ea9d37e09+0&branch=master https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/commits/master?af...

ostenning 5y ago

Re: finding time. I think this is true for all of life, as we get older our risk and reward profiles change. As we are encumbered by more responsibility, family, mortgage, etc, we stop taking the same risks and start playing life more “safely” or “securely”. Of course it doesn't have to be that way and I personally advocate for a debt free lifestyle for this reason. Too many times have we heard the story of the midlife crisis: the false deity of security and comfort that robs the well paid executive the majority of his or her life. Its a sad story. So my advice is to people is to work less for others and work more for your own projects and passions, life is simply too short to give your years to someone else, even if it pays well.

machiaweliczny 5y ago
I generally agree with you but total debt free life is suckery IMO when you are paid 90% by others people debt. It's better to take debt and profit from it (so invest and not consume, at least in current econ climate).

ip26 5y ago

Building useful and nonporous layers of abstractions and being able to quickly shift between them seems to be a key skill. When each layer leverages another, you can rapidly build something impressive. This in turn implies apart from technical skill, charting a good course from layer to layer can make a big difference, vs meandering without quite knowing where you are going.