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because i was not a good enough physicist or mathematician upon completing BA Mathematics and MS Physics and because my MS thesis was a FORTRAN code and because my "advisor" at IIT laughed at me when i informed him i wished to enter a EE BS program having previously completed said programs elsewhere . he insisted i enroll in EE MS program . nonsense . i would have been lost . also because my physics instructor in undergrad suggested i enroll in an MS Physics program . i was happy pushing buttons on IBM System 3 at the time until i got the stupid idea of applying for a technician job at an engineering firm which i was accepted to having answered by quite the coincidence the very same technical interview question i posed to myself only the week prior .
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honey the codewitch wrote: Why do you code? I watched Gemini and Apollo launches when I was little. Somehow I knew I didn't have The Right Stuff to be an astronaut. I was fascinated however by the views of Mission Control. All the panels with buttons that did Important Things. I wanted to learn how to do that.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I can relate to that.
At my current employer some years I met up with one of the New York office's developers, a knowledgeable "grey beard" if you will. Over beers we chatted about our backgrounds. Turned out he'd been a programmer on Apollo, working on the flight computer software.
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honey the codewitch wrote: rotary/Wankel engines and such. Then no doubt you'd be interested in what this company is creating: LiquidPiston | Reinventing the Rotary Engine[^]
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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That's interesting. I assumed rotary was dead tech outside of prop planes just because it needs a lot more development before it's competitive with traditional piston engines in road cars. And road cars are going electric, which frankly is lower maintenance and potentially better performing than the equiv gas car pound for pound.
So I wonder where this tech will go.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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1970 last year of school. They took us to a vocational guidance show and at one stall there was an IBM golfball typewriter printing Mona Lisa. I couldn't believe it. I stuck around and got a chance to play tic-tac-toe with the computer and also saw the golfball do a Noddy act nodding its "head" up and down and round and round. I was hooked. I never saw the rest of the show. I still have an IBM golfball on my desk and I still earn my living coding 53 years later.
Never regretted it and I always remember a quote which says find a job you enjoy and you will never work in your life.
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Everything I built as a kid was a bit rubbishy because I didn't have the tools or materials to build professional-looking stuff. With code, I could build stuff that looked as good or even better than the professional efforts.
PS - I "invented" the Deltic engine when I was about fourteen and then realised with huge sadness that it was impossible - one pair of pistons would always be moving in the same direction as each other. I still think that the Napier solution to that problem is one of the most imaginative pieces of engineering ever. There's an hypnotic animation at http://www.3d-meier.de/tut16/Napier/Ani1.html
<°}}}>«<
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Thanks!
Your link tags are encoded, but it's easy enough for me to copy them into a browser.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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The deltic is a wonderful piece of engineering. I can still hear, in my mind's ear, the sound of the locomotives on the East coast main line.
When I was at school, I drew up a sketch of an inline 4 cylinder engine where the four crank pins were 90 degrees apart. My tech master said it would never work; the vibrations would shake the engine apart.
Yamaha seemed to make it work with the cross plane engines such as in the R1 ...
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Notwithstanding I share your interest in weird engines, I first got the bug, to coin a phrase, at school - I'd have been 12 or 13. Read up books, used the school's timeshare terminal to learn a dialect of BASIC to make it do things, then went off in 1980 to Uni, to flunk a course in Electrical engineering, having been accepted as an apprentice by EMI in 1979. Learnt a teensy bit of FORTRAN on that course.
Had to get a job to make ends meet, so took a job at a small local company assembling specialist calculators. Fast forward a few years and I'm now troubleshooting them with a 'scope and I have an assistant who is doing an OU course in computing, and gives me a copy of UCSD Pascal. I start writing programs to emulate the financial calculators we're selling - I'm building "things" again. Then the company decides this might be worth pursuing and we hire a very mathematically adept programmer (with whom I'm still friends) in the mid 80's. He suggests we drop Pascal and go C based, which we do. Late 89 we both leave and join a software house which writes server based financial data delivery and calculation software. We're building "things" that talk to each other. Early 90s the company gets in financial trouble and some of the team including me are hired by one of their customers. We're building bigger "things" that talk to each other around the world. And I'm still there, building "things" and also building tiny things with Arduinos and so on from time to time for fun.
A lot of this is "making things do things" satisfaction. Which feeds in to my current hobby, amateur theatre, where we make really quite big things do things for the entertainment of others.
Still like engines, though ...
modified 26-Oct-23 6:50am.
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My high school guidance counselors didn't -- as in didn't provide any guidance. OTOH, my brilliant math teacher acquired funds to purchase a couple of Commadore PET 8K computers, and I discovered I liked coding and was good at it. That set me on the path to where I am today.
Since then, I've learned I'm good at woodworking, plumbing, wiring, and other practical skills, and I enjoy most of it. However, coding has yet to require me to delve into a muddy, spider-infested crawl space, so I keep coding.
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Physics degree - no jobs. Electronics co employed me on the basis that I could code a bit. Gave me a PBP11 and said "make it control a tomographic isotope emission scanner". Now (semi-retired) I do it for fun.
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As a kid I had two main obsessions: books and computers. By the time I was 10 I knew I wanted to be a programmer and writer.
I'm also really into oddball tech and I spend a lot of time reading about that kind of thing too.
honey the codewitch wrote: rotary/Wankel engines and such
That's an obsession of mine as well, along with vintage watches (especially the oddball ones, I have a whole collection of Accutrons). I drove an RX-7 and RX-8, I'm still sad about the demise of rotary sports cars.
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I compromised. I loved drawing and writing all kinds of fantasy...but none of that certifies a salary.
So I became a computer engineer. Compromised by doing videogames...
I soon discovered there was one thing that frustrates me more than writers block or not knowing what to doodle next...my source code mysteriously not compiling XD
I can be a nazi about clean and elegant C code (throw in as many comments as you want, but you must be mindful of every kilobyte you waste in the executable)...but I think in the end, I still hate coding. It reminds me just how human I am and how totally inept I can be talking to this insanely inept and expensive calculator in front of me.
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I was in my senior year (1978) of college learning to be an electrical engineer and I started reading Byte magazine. The articles on micro-processors were quite interesting so I decided to build a computer (z80 CPU). Bought an s100 bus case with back plane, power supply, CPU card and a display card (attaches to the TV). I wire wrapped a 4K RAM card and a dual serial port card. I had no programming language, only a simple monitor program (called Zapple). All of this was finished the day after my last final. I now started learning how to program the z80 (by the numbers) and spent the next 3 weeks learning the instruction set. When I got to my first job they asked me if I'd be will to work in the test department as opposed to where I originally hired for and I said yes. I figured I really didn't know squat and was going to learn something no mater where they put me. Well, low and behold, the test group manager found out I had my own computer and asked me if I wanted to work on a microprocessor controlled smoke detector tester. Was basically asking me if wanted to do my hobby at work! I ended up doing embedded programming for my whole career (retired now).
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Why do I code? Because I get to design & build something that does a task that I want and need.
For me it stated in 1959 with what was billed as a computer guided multi spindle drill press.
It was a stretch to call this computer guided as the instructions were a inch wide paper spool that had
holes punched in it to tell the drill what to do.
The only reason I got the chance to manage this machine was because all the lathe operators kept tearing
the paper instruction.
The older fellow who was to teach me liked that I was eager to learn.
Side Story I ask him why Diebold sent him to Illinois to unlock a Vault Door.
After he told me to keep my mouth shut he said.
"Diebold hired him because he robbed banks and knew how to break into their Vaults"
After a number of years working for a Swiss Pharmaceutical Company (CIBA) I decided to go to Pharmacy School
I took an elective class in computer programming BASIC on a DEC Writer. I think it was a PDP 11
I was hooked and bought a Apple /// when I graduated
My best teacher was Apple Dayton a user group that not only taught new user's but published a
floppy disk almost every month
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I wanted to build things. Don't know why either.
I started in the garage at 10 or 1973 building VW Bug Type 1 engines. Then moved on to the rest of the car, and then learned how to paint cars. Then I got a job working for Xerox fixing their garbage copiers, and saw these PC computers popping up everywhere, so I bought one, an IBM XT with a floppy drive in 1984.
I quit Xerox, just got fed up with it in 1988, and started my own business as a communications contractor, building wire and cable infrastructure. I built my most of my stuff, even sheet metal components, where I bought sheet metal tools such as a bender, punches to make fiber optic connection boxes, cooling systems, brackets. And I built radio systems, including quick mount radio towers out of steel tubing.
Got tired of it and wanted to go back to writing code, and haven't stopped since, I'm addicted to it.
I'm also addicted to working on cars as well, replacing the cylinder head on my Ford Focus when COVID lock down started, and went through the entire car replacing all the rubber bushings for the suspension.
I also love driving cars, and my need for speed is quite insatiable, and I miss my 1986 911 convertible. I bought a Porsche Macan GTS, and upgraded the brakes, and did my 40K maintenance on my own.
If it ain't broke don't fix it
Discover my world at jkirkerx.com
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There was a game that only let you start with 3 lives.
I made if FF lives.
I think it was using decimal math to decrement which did not seem to work well.
Made it to the end and killed the final boss.
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To solve puzzles / problems, hoping to be a hero.
I got to see big iron in a glass palace as an early teen, see a card sorter run, hear a multi-page burster run. I heard my dad solve OC7(s) and watch him design systems.
I wanted a piece of that.
I fell into an admin role, so most coding is in support of or extending functionality.
Rabbit holes - Making and watching makers (mostly wood workers)
Reddit & Pinterest
eg. YouTube maker Blondihacks machining & building a steam engine (Pennsylvania A3 Switcher)
YouTube category "idiots at work"
Working on getting a 3d printer going and adding a laser to it, so will merge making and computing soon.
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bryanren wrote: Rabbit holes - Making and watching makers
One I find fascinating is Allen Millyard. He builds his own 'bikes and engines out of other 'bikes and engines - mostly Kawasaki but others, too - in his home garage using hand tools and a couple of machines. So he has built a V12 out of a pair of Z1300 straight sixes, lots of straight sixes out of fours, a V-twin out of part of an aero engine, a V10 bike with a Dodge Viper motor ... you get the idea.
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As a traditional (non-script) developer, who always starts the code with proper class, methods etc in C++/Java,
class ApiClient
{
ApiClient(){}
getSomething(){}
putSomething(){}
}
This always looked so clean for my eyes..
Now compare it with JS/Typescript code :
class ApiClient {
public get(apiURL: string): Promise<any>{
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
const options = {
method: 'GET',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
},
};
const request = http.request(apiURL, options, (response) => {
let data = '';
response.on('data', (chunk) => {
data += chunk;
});
response.on('end', () => {
if (response.statusCode === 200) {
const responseData = JSON.parse(data);
resolve(responseData);
} else {
reject(new Error(`Error: ${response.statusCode}, Response: ${data}`));
}
});
});
request.on('error', (error) => {
reject(error);
});
request.end();
});
}
}
Why do they want to write the whole code into the ()?
It's almost like writing all the code inside (..) in a C++ function.. where we just expect the params & arguments.
like:
ApiClient(.....Write the whole code here? What? :( ){}
Seriously I have so much pain tracking where the brackets begin and end if I'm reviewing a .js code snippet.
Did C++/Java also move into this Anonymous function hype?
Looks like I'll have a pretty steep learning curve on any direction. Hating this.
How did you survive this? If you happen to a non-JS developer migrating into the JS world?
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Nand32 wrote: How did you survive this?
I didn't. I am dead.
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Nand32 wrote: Seriously I have so much pain tracking where the brackets begin and end if I'm reviewing a .js code snippet.
VS Code has an free add-on (forgetting it's name, but I've installed it on my machine) which matches brackets, rather displays matching brackets with the same colour, which I find very useful.
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It's a setting, Editor > Bracket Pair Colorization. I have it Enabled.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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