zwieback

43 ms·

571.
by zwieback 4y ago
Just in the US we have a crazy amount of standard plugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#/media/File:NEM... and this isn't a theoretical thing, in our lab we routinely use about 10 different
572.
by zwieback 4y ago
We definitely didn't tell our kids that, more like "make sure you get a business minor if you pursue something with low earning potential". I think kids do still hear that but not from any of the parents I know.
573.
by zwieback 4y ago
Sure it does, wasn't commenting on slant, just level of sensationalism
574.
by zwieback 4y ago
Definitely a problem. We were outliers letting our kids roam the neighborhood at age 8 or so. I wonder if some of it is because we haven't had wars, famines, etc. in the US recently so not a good reference point for what's truly l
575.
by zwieback 4y ago
Wouldn't lump The Atlantic in with general "fear mongering media", which is certainly a problem
576.
by zwieback 4y ago
I went through all the same phases but in Germany. Luckily my dad decided to spring for a floppy for our Apple ][ right from the start, never had to mess with cassette tapes. Nice to see Watcom C++ mentioned in there. Was far and away my fa
577.
by zwieback 4y ago
Came here to say that - I just checked, my preferred breakfast tea (Brooke Bond Red Label) has 60 vs. coffee 95 so definitely in the ball park. I always thought it was like a quarter of coffee.
578.
by zwieback 4y ago
Everyone I know who programs LabVIEW programs like the anti-example shown in the article. It's not LabVIEW's fault, you can certainly develop cleanly. The problem is that quick proof-of-concepts developed by non programmers (techn
579.
by zwieback 4y ago
Maybe my career in metrology has me jaded but I think you have to: 1) Define a metric meaningful for whatever you're interested in, e.g. developer productivty 2) Find a way of accurately measuring that metric (surely not LOC) 3) Do som
580.
by zwieback 4y ago
All true. What I remember was just how damn loud it was. We were quite a bit away and you could feel it in your bones.
581.
by zwieback 4y ago
I was setting up a trade show in Zurich when Janet Jackson was soundchecking Rhythm Nation in the next building. None of our hard drives crashed but that was in 88 or 89 so I guess maybe the vulnerability showed up much much later.
582.
by zwieback 4y ago
Yup, I worked on a PC-to-Mac networking server product and we tested with TokenRing as well. Massive hardware but good performance. We also had a lot of coax wire in those days. To this day I still look down on twisted pair and the garbage
583.
by zwieback 4y ago
I started my coding career in the early 90s and at that time there were a buttload of non-TCP network protocols running on small computers (Macs, PCs, etc.) Netware, LANtastic, AppleTalk, Netbios stuff... Even though they all had something
584.
by zwieback 4y ago
You're saying happiness and unhappiness exist on independent scales, should we plot them in an x-y graph then? Upper right quadrant: overexcitement, lower left quadrant: boredom. Not sure about the off-diagonals.
585.
by zwieback 4y ago
A lot of the software engineering approaches from that era (refactoring, TDD, patterns) make more sense in the world I grew up in: large pre-compiled code bases where everything other than the base OS layer is under the engineer's cont
586.
by zwieback 4y ago
Noticed that at work where we have lots of DeWalt. The vacs are not great.
587.
by zwieback 4y ago
All of this guy's reviews are instant classics. I watch reviews of stuff I'll never buy.
588.
by zwieback 4y ago
Interesting - I was born in New Jersey in 66 when my dad was working at Bell Labs but I grew up in Stuttgart. Had no idea there was a "Bell Labs" there
589.
by zwieback 4y ago
I'm 56, still actively coding everyday but also using accumulated ME & EE Domain knowledge. What's most striking to me is that all my bosses three or four levels up are same age or younger than me. That affords me some level o
590.
by zwieback 4y ago
I had no idea everything2 was still alive! Nice surprise
591.
by zwieback 4y ago
ML is maybe a good example of a hot field that's sucking up the best as well as upper middle performing developers only to later spit them out when the meltdown comes. That in itself may not be a problem if you get your foot in the doo
592.
by zwieback 4y ago
No, we were the ones writing the PC drivers, for DOS, Windows and OS/2. Back then the lower layers were more or less standardized but there was no AppleTalk stack so that's what we developed as a product.
593.
by zwieback 4y ago
In the early 90s I was working on AppleTalk-PC interoperability SW, which included "ATP", the AppleTalk Transaction Protocol, which is kind of a guaranteed delivery protocol. It even had "at least once" and "exactly
594.
by zwieback 4y ago
I was thinking of total energy (and maybe something like CO2) per food on the customer's table, including the waste that's produced.
595.
by zwieback 4y ago
Farmers' markets are great, yes, as entertainment for wealthy consumers with spare time, me being one of those. As a sales channel they are extremely inefficient and all told probably bad for the environment.
596.
by zwieback 4y ago
Not for safety, gave up on that about 20 years ago. But definitely to keep state that I don't want to get messed up by outside calls. Also just to document/signal how an interface should get used to the outside world.
597.
by zwieback 4y ago
In my personal experience a lot of the mess stems from complex layer-to-layer interactions. Within my own modules I'm pretty good at keeping things clean but marshalling data from C# to C++ (or Python to C or this lib to that lib) is w
598.
by zwieback 4y ago
came here to say that. Always use forums for repair advice.
599.
by zwieback 4y ago
Agree, I don't even order coffee in Portland anymore because everything is "delicate, fruity, floral" light roast aka. tastes like goddam vinegar.
600.
by zwieback 4y ago
I work at hp where we get new PCs every few years but I also have two maxed-out z800 workstations, one for Linux, one for Windows. For the most part this works great but the one downside is that the ancient BIOS and older slots prevent some

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