I've Been Learning To Code At My New Job And I Work With A Senior Software Engineer, Who's A Genius At

I've been learning to code at my new job and I work with a senior software engineer, who's a genius at this sort of thing.

But like an hour ago, he was in my office angrily murmuring, "what?! what?! what the hell?" over and over again as he furiously typed on my keyboard, trying to fix something in git.

and it's honestly very reassuring to know.

that whether you're a novice or an expert at coding... sometimes you just find yourself angrily swearing at the program for showing you the same error message a dozen times, asking why are you doing that, almost begging, really.

it was actually kinda funny, he sounded like he was about to start crying, which was literally me, two hours ago, when I initially asked him for help.

it's part of the human condition, I think, wrestling with computer programs and furiously typing in commands, only to be met with defiance.

Meandering thoughts.... part 1

Authers note: Got high wrote what I was thinking. Be warned:

Got my code reviewed, and passed, at work.

And when testing the temperature sensor I had made a driver for… I was getting questions about why it could not measure anything bellow 0.

Which I could easily answer with "Because I told it to".

Because I was told to send the data out in fullscale… which I was told are simply a 14 bit representation of the temprature from a minimum to a maximum.

And the minimum for this sensor, was 0. So I clamped the values: if ( temperature > maximum) { temperature = maximum} else if (temperature < minimum) { temperature =minimum}

Turns out… that is not correct. The full-scale simply is the very weird way we say what a bit means. Normally like this "Each LSB ( least significant bit ) represent 0.0634 degrees celsius" So if the sensor returns 1000, you go: 63.4 = 1000 * 0.0634;

So what I HAD to encode the number as was that constant, but on 16 bit, in signed form.

Now… that is my bad. I did not understand a thing, and did not ask for an explanation… And the ones I got from the intro to the codebase was "its fullscale", and I did not have access to documentation.

BUT! The guy who DID know this, reviewed my code…

So why, oh why, did he not see the the function clearly marked "Claimping values" in there and then tell me it was wrong?

This review process is by the way partly for SECURITY! If giant breaks in business logic is not found, what do you think the chance is that a security issue is found? My guess is 0%

Remember. Tech companies being competent, is a myth. Companies are teenagers showing up for a presentation in history class still drunk from an all night kegger, just making up whatever stories they make up on the spot… except everyone in the class will lose their income, and have their life stability ripped away from them if they don't tell the company that they are absolutely right and are getting a A+.

Your posts are erratic and behaviour most unsettling

In order to learn something, I use it.

That means using it badly to start with. When it is a C++ thing, I make a tiny demo program in Godbolt with comments for myself. I then go over it until I know it for an exam, or I polish it everytime I need it. That way, the things I need to most, I have put the most work into.

For arcitecture like von Neumann, I would have the model drawn up, and then on a whiteboard, go through how the computer runs a tiny assembler program ( Like adding 2 variables together and saving it in a third ), and write it up in normal english text.

The CPU fetches the first variable from memory, into a register

The CPU fetches the second variable from memory, into a register

The CPU uses the ALU to add the variables together in the first variables place

You can use this Tom Scot video to get a good start:

If I need to be able to draw the model from memory, I then practice that AFTER I can use it.

It is much easier to learn drawing a model when you know how to use it, since it will be obvious to you when you are missing a bit or placed something wrong, because you know how it is supposed to work.

I don't know what context you need this in but... unless you are getting very specialized, the von neuman model is more something you should have a idea of what it is, and if you need it in the future, you can look it up then... it is not terrible important for understanding most things computer in my experience

okay question: how do you guys study graphics? i have to study —among other things—the von neumann model for next week and i just realized i have no idea how. how do i remember which part is which? how to draw it? the only idea i have is to stare at the page for an hour or find a way to magicly develop photographic memory overnight. so, if anyone has a tip or a technique or something, i'd be forever grateful to know

That is REALLY neat!!

you would not believe the amount of joy it brings me to have pretty errors. I'm insane I'm losing my mind I spent at least a dozen hours on this. but LOOK!!!!

these are all auto generated!! all I did was *describe* the syntax of json with a formal grammar and this is what I get from that. I could now make ANY custom syntax and get these beautiful errors 🤤

Meandering thoughts.... part 2

Remember. Tech companies being competent, is a myth. Companies are teenagers showing up for a presentation in history class still drunk from an all night kegger, just making up whatever stories they make up on the spot… except everyone in the class will lose their income, and have their life stability ripped away from them if they don't tell the company that they are absolutely right and are getting a A+.

They have no idea what they are doing. Everyone just pretends they do.

Here is a good way to think about it:

600 million years ago, life changed forms from single celled life, to multicellular life. Because there are niches those lifeforms can fill that single celled life cannot. They are able to do things single cells simply cannot.

But it took a long time because there are many steps you have to go though before you can be multicellular. One of which is instead of doing cellular division as fast as you can, you can slow it down in response to situations. Like "If there is not enough food around, slow down so we can survive on much less food, rather than dying while trying to divide".

Otherwise, when you try to get specialized cells to do different things, they will grow at different rates and essentially… be a creature born with cancer that kills it.

Most likely, failures happened many many many times before multicellular life managed a form that could work. Many of these failures would be a multicellular life form happening… and then dying out a few minutes later from cancer.

Multicellular life became more and more complex.

After a while, big creatures like ants had evolved. These are doing the same trick that the single cells did to turn to multicellular.

They had evolved everything needed for cooperation, creatures that each had a special function.

There are several ways to do this, ants certainly have a good way, since 20% of all biomass is ants… But it lacks… flexibility. Ants can often control how many worker ants vs soldier ants are created, and so the colony can adapt to situations… But only if the tools needed for the situation is one is have evolved to handle…

A more flexible ways, is what the Homo genus have done. We could call it "society". More than a tribe.

Now, it have very much allowed the Homo lifeforms to fill a new niche… but since it is SUPER recent, a lot of it is still… bad. But every-time evolution finds a new niece, it evolves FAST for a while.

Like, imagine a cell that inside 50 generations had evolved into more than 10-25 different lifeforms. We would most certainly describe that cell as "Mutating disturbingly fast". That is about how fast human ways of of structuring ourselves change.

Like there is no 1 way to measure when a new society starts existing or stops existing…. But most do NOT last a long time. Ways of organizing humans change and switch and mutate, evolve, die and gets invented all the time. First ones was very location locked. Countries in different forms. And only in the last 500 years did they finally evolve up to "Half decent" where we did not have stupid systems like feudalism, where we had to have massive civil wars ever-time people disagreed about who should inherit the throne, and if a single king was an idiot, the country just collapsed.

Now we have a new weird organization. More flexible than countries, who are so tied in with where they are. Corporations.

They are VERY young. And so, like always when evolution have a new niece… very shit.

Corporations grow huge, with no thought for "Why should we become bigger and more powerful", become powerful and force everyone else to accept it, even if it does shitty things to become powerful. It then have no need to make good products. Which is good. Because that is hard. They can just go "We are Microsoft/Monsanto/whatever. You will take whatever we give you, and smile" They are cancer. Growing until it kills its hosts ( Countries ), or gets removed.