And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?
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Man, I had some fails in my time, but this one wasn't just a fail, it was fucking *embarrassing*.
"Build a special custom icebreaking display using the hardware on the ship, it'll be brilliant!"
The hardware doesn't work in the ice. Any actual icebreaker captain could have told me -- us -- that, had we -- they -- ever actually consulted one.
Man, and at one company I was unusual for walking 50 feet down to the data center and actually talking with the folks who were the day-to-day users of our programs.
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@GeePawHill the only safe way to see a polar bear. If you see one NOT from a distance, something's gone wrong, right?
@dtwx @GeePawHill from my understanding, there is no difference between feeding a polar bear by hand and feeding a polar bear a hand.
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@GeePawHill the only safe way to see a polar bear. If you see one NOT from a distance, something's gone wrong, right?
@dtwx @GeePawHill I was told by Quebec Parks staff once "if you see a polar bear, you'll be lucky; if you see a polar bear up close, you'll be very lucky". (And survive?)
We did not see any polar bears.
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And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill amazing story for multiple reasons (we have comedy officers!?!) — wonder if you ever read Madeleine Akrich? Her 1992 "The de-scription of technical objects" was an enormous influence on my field of STS, basically from the same story of good-idea-at-the-time design failing to inquire about local conditions of use. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242461431_The_De-scription_of_Technical_Objects
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And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill fantastic story thanks for sharing!!
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Upside: I saw many many seals, and a polar bear from a distance. The comedy officer was actually the helicopter maintenance guy, and I got a helicopter tour of an iceberg. All of that was rather awesome.
@GeePawHill from a distance is, I gather, the best way to see a polar bear.
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So, for my juniors, when I tell you "typing is not the bottleneck", I know what I'm fucking talking about.
It took me a couple of weeks to re-create 4 months worth of work. If I had to bet, I'd bet my second edition was *better* than the edition I lost.
So we come down to the day, and I am ready.
A similar anecdote (on a much smaller and trivial scale) happened to me in college. I had been working on a home assignment (implementing matrix multiplication algorithms) for a few weeks, and a few days before turning it in, I fucked up the tar command that I was using to do regular backups - effectively overwriting the working, painfully debugged version, with a much older one. Out of frustration I ended up rewriting It entirely from scratch and it took me just a couple of days to get back to where I was, and obviously it was of much better quality than the original!
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And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill Wonderful story, thank you!
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@GeePawHill I'm confused, weren't all 3 input systems already in place? Did each have its own display? Were they just being completely ignored because they didn't work?
@billseitz They were all already in place, with displays, on the bridge. I suspect they were often ignored, cuz they didn't work very well.
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@GeePawHill Have you read the Aubrey/Maturin series? It’s partly an extended essay on the knife’s-edge dance between the corrupting effects of inviolate power and being a social animal. And power due to position vs. power due to individual accomplishment.
@marick I have, actually, at least in part because you liked it so much. I've read them all.
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@GeePawHill there was a story about a couple of scientists in WW2 assigned to improve U boat detection and destruction rates. 1 read reports and did calcs at a desk. The other went out on patrol and saw how hopeless reports were at conveying reality. It is a danger all disciplines of engineers can encounter and we often need to go and visit the 'workplace' to understand how the work is done and the reality of any equipment and automation. Oh, and add on human factors too.
@GeePawHill just checked my reference. It was German magnetic mines not U boats and patrol was on a minesweeper. Quoted in "Dispelling Chemical Engineering Myths" by Trevor Kletz. Original source appears to be R.V. Jones 1978, Most Secret War p353.
Anyway concept still holds if not detail -
@GeePawHill @mayintoronto and talk to the end-user, who may not be the same person!
@pozorvlak @GeePawHill @mayintoronto I just have three questions:
Am I allowed to talk to an end user?
Is it actually possible for me to talk an end user?
Is the end user willing to talk to me?
It's like herding genies. -
@pozorvlak @GeePawHill @mayintoronto I just have three questions:
Am I allowed to talk to an end user?
Is it actually possible for me to talk an end user?
Is the end user willing to talk to me?
It's like herding genies.@drgroftehauge depends on the context, but that's what a lot of my work is about. Getting people access to context so they can make better decisions.
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And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?
@GeePawHill
Fantastic story!Another way of summing up the issue: When doing data analysis, get real world data as quickly as possible
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And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill I should totally write up probably my greatest failure as a programmer, where I may have quietly killed a professor's research project (well, one of them) by developing on a too-small machine. And I got to learn that I'd developed on a too-small machine in person in an awkward way.
(Someday I also have to write up my most successful program, which was more or less an accident that snowballed and I didn't even discover how successful until years and years later.)
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And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?
@GeePawHill Thanks! -
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill this was a great read, thanks for sharing
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And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill Thanks for sharing! It’s always good to be reminded of how many ways clever software can easily be defeated by real world conditions!
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And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill Amazing! Thank you for sharing!
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So, for my juniors, when I tell you "typing is not the bottleneck", I know what I'm fucking talking about.
It took me a couple of weeks to re-create 4 months worth of work. If I had to bet, I'd bet my second edition was *better* than the edition I lost.
So we come down to the day, and I am ready.
@GeePawHill this is what Artur Grabowski from OpenBSD calls "quality through destruction". When he worked on file systems he would test on the disks that held his changes.
When working on things you often realise something should be done differently, but "it works now". When starting over, v2 gets the cleaner code.
Great story, envious of your adventure!
