It's difficult to relate this to modern perspectives on software design and architecture because the running example is hard to comprehend. It seems to be an interface to a data structure that may have been useful in certain applications in the context of hardware constraints 50 years ago. It would be great if somebody published an implementation of this example with the variations in C for illustration.
Readit NewsDalekBaldwin commented on “True” Randomness vs. “Pseudo” Randomness pcg-random.org/rng-basics... · Posted by u/memorable
One time, my wife and siblings had to choose from a number of heirlooms that had be left to them but not assigned. They are living around the planet, and the discussion came up about how to decide the order in which they'd select the items.
I came up with this: Each of them select a different stock market index. On the same calendar trading day, they choose two digits past the decimal. When the market's close, compare the two digits of the closing price of their chosen index to the two digits they selected and then choose heirlooms in the order of closeness.
It worked quite well. They were on board because they could make two selections in determining their order: Market and digits. Two of them could choose the same two digits if they wanted and still have different scores. No complaints.
Not random, but seemed fair to all.
This is similar to how "numbers racket" lotteries in the early 20th century operated, so that players could trust that the outcome could not be rigged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game#Gameplay
(The film "Force of Evil" is about a plot to nevertheless rig the outcome.)
DalekBaldwin commented on “Clean” code, horrible performance computerenhance.com/p/cle... · Posted by u/eapriv
Casey Muratori knows a lot about optimizing performance in game engines. He then assumes that all other software must be slow because of the exact same problems.
I think the core problem here is that he assumes that everything is inside a tight loop, because in a game engine that's rendering 60+ times a second (and probably running physics etc at a higher rate than that) that's almost always true.
Also the fact that his example of what "everyone" supposedly calls "clean code" looks like some contrived textbook example from 20 years ago strains his credibility.
Edit: come to think of it, the only person I know of who actually uses the phrase "clean code" as if it's some kind of concrete thing with actual rules is Uncle Bob. Is Casey assuming the entire commercial software industry === Uncle Bob? It's like he talked to one enterprise java dev like 10 years ago and based his opinion of the entire industry on them.
> Is Casey assuming the entire commercial software industry === Uncle Bob?
It's uncharitable to take Casey as making absolute blanket statements like that, but still, it would not be unreasonable for him to single out Uncle Bob in particular.
The Amazon rankings for Bob Martin's "Clean Code":
Best Sellers Rank: #5,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1 in Software Design & Engineering
#2 in Software Testing
#4 in Software Development (Books)
If this trend results in more miniseries versus long-winded, open-ended season after season that go nowhere, I’m all for it.
I think this trend is why they've gone all-in on sex-on-the-beach shows and true crime docuseries. One season can easily be self-contained, and if the viewer gets another, it's just a nice bonus.
A question to answer: is the enjoyment coming from actually being the machinist, or is it coming from assembling something you designed? The answer could be either. But if you just want to bring something you designed to physical fruition and you are limited on space then I would recommend finding machine shops that will make what you design for you. This is what Protolabs, Shapeways, Xometry, etc do. You don't need to actually have a 3D printer or laser cutter or CNC mill to get things built. You can probably find a local fabricator too. I found a guy that made handrails and would do random welding jobs, I used to go to his shop for all sorts of different things. Even if you get the money and space to build out a shop, there's a lot of skill to these crafts and people dedicate their whole career to becoming experts in them.
The goal is the end product, yes. But there's joy to be had in getting there. And more importantly, I know I won't be able to achieve it without a good feedback loop for iterating on my designs, which means doing at least some machining on my own.
For one thing, sketching out variations on a design typically reveals there's a wide space of possible parameters in the spec. In many cases it's obvious that only a small subset will actually be technically feasible (either for machining or for reasonable functionality of the finished artifact or both), but not obvious exactly what that subset will be.
I'm not even talking about what could be revealed by finite element analysis or other formal methods (though I'm not averse to learning those too). I mean the feel, the taste, and the intuition I can't get from just drawing and doing the math. Like Jackie Stewart said, "You don't have to be an engineer to be be a racing driver, but you do have to have Mechanical Sympathy." I have mechanical sympathy for computing systems, for rapidly narrowing down appropriate design spaces in software projects, but I don't yet have mechanical sympathy for mechanical systems.
I read this as the OP was wanting to dip their toe into "making", not to do some self-directed learning such that they'd call themselves a MechE. Schooling would be great of course, but if your goals are very modest, I think what the OP has in mind might be fine too.
It'd be like telling someone fooling with Python that they need to take a full CS degree otherwise they'll fail to appreciate the beautiful mathematical underpinnings of functional programming. That might be true, but that's also not the goal.
Edit: clarification
Yes, I was implying "to do stuff like the author of the article does" ( https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/rstory/ ), coming from a very similar situation as him -- as a software engineer with an already broad general scientific and technical background, in a small apartment, getting into the concrete particulars of designing and building cool mechanical projects on a small scale and budget.
As somebody trying to get into mechanical engineering while living in a small urban apartment, this has been an incredible resource... not that I've made much progress along the lines it describes though.
It's tough to plan a path toward growth in these skills without sustaining inordinate expenses at each step. I can't afford to become afflicted with Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I've come close to dropping huge sums of cash on tools before discovering, at the last minute, critical reasons that they could not do what I need for the designs I have in mind. Maybe I'll visit a makerspace? Ah, but every one in my area appears to have gone defunct since Covid year zero.
So the journey up to this point has been:
- A lot of reading: not just faffing around with hobbyist blogspam -- full-on MechE textbooks, learning what really goes into engineering schematic diagrams, all that good stuff
- Getting back up to speed with the pencil-on-paper geometry and math skills I've lost after years of doing all my intellectual work in digital form (at least I can still draw a freehand circle)
- Proto-proto-prototyping: just making some physical objects roughly of the same geometry as what I've designed -- whittling them out of wood, sculpting them out of polymer clay
- Hacking together janky tools: trying to make a crappy mini lathe out of Meccano-clone parts, trying to make a crappy mini lathe out of an electric drill, just to get a basic feel for what's involved
- Apologizing to my wife for all this weird scary stuff in the corner of the apartment
I was a CS major. The only hands-on physical engineering I did in college was cooking a single-transistor chip in a freshman applied physics lab. Basically I feel like someone who has studied everything about the physics of bicycles but has never ridden one. I'm really struggling on how to proceed.
If you haven't yet read it, go straight the source on this one and read Peter Naur's "Programming as Theory Building". The paper is excellent, and an easy read. It's linked to by TFA.
The consequences of the logic contained within Naur's essay are far stronger than I think the article understands them to be.
It's not exactly an easy read -- whenever I recommend it to someone I also warn them that it contains the most passive sentence in the history of the English language: "Information obtained by a member of group A about the compiler resulting from the further modification of it after about 10 years made it clear that at that later stage the original powerful structure was still visible, but made entirely ineffective by amorphous additions of many different kinds."
But the content more than makes up for the style!
DalekBaldwin commented on FTX’s collapse was a crime, not an accident coindesk.com/layer2/2022/... · Posted by u/mcone
The way you stated this feeling remids me of Gell Mann Amnesia.
https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
A corollary:
Think about all the places you've ever worked, all the organizations you've been part of, where you know how the sausage is actually made, and how that differs from the way the organization portrays itself.
Now think about all the other organizations in the world, whose internal workings you're not privy to.
There were rumblings that my high school, which had plenty of AP classes already, was about to introduce a combination AP/IB curriculum, which absolutely terrified us. I and my AP-taking classmates breathed a huge sigh of relief when it was announced that it would be delayed, and the students in the year below us would be the guinea pigs. They would have to run twice as fast just to stay in place.