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It wasn’t a paper test and cramming. I had to create a product from scratch. I could have made a simpler product but I’m type a and challenged myself. 3D modeli

It wasn’t a paper test and cramming. I had to create a product from scratch. I could have made a simpler product but I’m type a and challenged myself. 3D modeling, waiting for a 3D printer to complete, designing and manufacturing creating circuit boards, programming them, setting up a server, modifying the printed case by hand to insert glass, iterating when tolerances aren’t right. …it was a lot of work. But now I get to make cool shit for a living. Honestly believe if you give me enough time and money I can make anything. Worth it.

marcan_42 5y ago
> Honestly believe if you give me enough time and money I can make anything. Worth it. Same, but it didn't take a week on modafinil to finish a crazy project for me, I just always just liked making cool shit ever since I was a kid. Currently more on the software/kernel side, but I've done my share of hardware projects. For me, after bouncing around a few universities, I realized how much of a broken joke the system was and resolved to go the easiest route to get the piece of paper (an on-line university), which I'm glad I did because the one time in my life I needed it it was important... but uni never taught me anything I couldn't have learned more efficiently on my own. I distinctly remember that time in a microcontrollers class where the book was wrong and teaching the exact opposite of the solution to the problem it was trying to teach, and I'd known about that one for like 7 years at that point, and when I offered to the teacher to write a little article about it so we could all learn about it, he said yes and never even read it... Or that time where as a sophomore I was helping a team of seniors working on a project to build a CubeSat, and I designed the PCBs and all the firmware and we won the competition to get funding and actually launch... and the uni's response was to kick us out of the lab we were in because "we were using too much space" (about 1m of desk space there). That CubeSat never launched. Also, there was one part of that board designed by a professor instead of me. It was the only part that didn't work. And I thought it was dodgy at the time, and with my current experience I can confidently say that design was utterly insane and broken and he had no idea what he was doing. Meanwhile in Calc II they wanted me to memorize three dozen identities because... why? I liked math until I got to that class, because even though it wasn't exactly being taught in an engaging way, I could work out the underlying concepts and understand and appreciate it, and work from first principles. Then it got complicated enough that doing that at the exam was no longer viable and I was just expected to become a computer and memorize all the damn formulas (and it wasn't just a few), understanding be damned. I cheated my way through that exam ("yes professor, I promise this TI-84 emulator on my Zaurus PDA is exactly like the real thing and I don't have a little formula database app in another window"). I damn well know what integration is and how it fundamentally works and how to apply it, but storing rote trivially looked up information is what we have paper and computers for. I don't go around memorizing programming APIs, I look up what I need and whatever I use often enough comes naturally. Chemistry was more fun. We were allowed one index card, handwritten, both sides for the exam. I developed an electrical arc sharpening mechanism for mechanical pencil lead, so I could handwrite it all in 4pt size or so. Give me limitations and I will make the best use of them :) Yeah, the system is broken.

marcan_42 5y ago

> Honestly believe if you give me enough time and money I can make anything. Worth it. Same, but it didn't take a week on modafinil to finish a crazy project for me, I just always just liked making cool shit ever since I was a kid. Currently more on the software/kernel side, but I've done my share of hardware projects. For me, after bouncing around a few universities, I realized how much of a broken joke the system was and resolved to go the easiest route to get the piece of paper (an on-line university), which I'm glad I did because the one time in my life I needed it it was important... but uni never taught me anything I couldn't have learned more efficiently on my own. I distinctly remember that time in a microcontrollers class where the book was wrong and teaching the exact opposite of the solution to the problem it was trying to teach, and I'd known about that one for like 7 years at that point, and when I offered to the teacher to write a little article about it so we could all learn about it, he said yes and never even read it... Or that time where as a sophomore I was helping a team of seniors working on a project to build a CubeSat, and I designed the PCBs and all the firmware and we won the competition to get funding and actually launch... and the uni's response was to kick us out of the lab we were in because "we were using too much space" (about 1m of desk space there). That CubeSat never launched. Also, there was one part of that board designed by a professor instead of me. It was the only part that didn't work. And I thought it was dodgy at the time, and with my current experience I can confidently say that design was utterly insane and broken and he had no idea what he was doing. Meanwhile in Calc II they wanted me to memorize three dozen identities because... why? I liked math until I got to that class, because even though it wasn't exactly being taught in an engaging way, I could work out the underlying concepts and understand and appreciate it, and work from first principles. Then it got complicated enough that doing that at the exam was no longer viable and I was just expected to become a computer and memorize all the damn formulas (and it wasn't just a few), understanding be damned. I cheated my way through that exam ("yes professor, I promise this TI-84 emulator on my Zaurus PDA is exactly like the real thing and I don't have a little formula database app in another window"). I damn well know what integration is and how it fundamentally works and how to apply it, but storing rote trivially looked up information is what we have paper and computers for. I don't go around memorizing programming APIs, I look up what I need and whatever I use often enough comes naturally. Chemistry was more fun. We were allowed one index card, handwritten, both sides for the exam. I developed an electrical arc sharpening mechanism for mechanical pencil lead, so I could handwrite it all in 4pt size or so. Give me limitations and I will make the best use of them :) Yeah, the system is broken.