I think Newton is on the phone...
Once the accelerating force is removed the object will go into an orbit that includes the point at which the force stops. This however is Earth
I ported a Psion phone manager app (contacts & sms) to PalmOS. I can clearly remember the thrill of sending a message via the Bluetooth add on via a Nokia 6310i
I know very little about horses, but find myself surrounded by them thanks to my wife’s interests.
We have a horse who is quiet natured and well behaved.
But, the fight or flight instinct wakes up very quickly and he’s 600kg.
25 years ago I did the same thing with MS flightsim as an interesting project. I took a similar approach except I was using Java.
I got as far as being able to navigate to lat/long fixes.
Learnt quite a bit in the process
>I've come to suspect the normal way large companies are organised makes performant software almost impossible.
I think this is a bit of an over generalisation. There were (and still are) many large companies producing performant and reliable software.
I suspect when things just work (think of the global phone system) people don't realise how much software is involved.
When was the last time you picked up a fixed line hand set and there was a software bug preventing you from calling any other handset on the planet - without varying delays or dropped packets?
We have an 87 year old who is a real fan of her iPad for staying in touch, reading and audio books.
I personally use 3 ipads - I hate to throw stuff away:
1) old 9.7 pro as main device
2) old Air 2 for Zwift (this will sadly retire when updates are no longer available
3) Even older Air for connecting to FlightSim for charts
Way back in about 2001, I developed a text messaging (sms) and phone book management app for palmOS.
I bought an m505 and a new fangled Bluetooth adapter. For the time it seemed revolutionary to be able to sync to a phone in your pocket without having to align IR ports
In 2008 I applied for the program just to learn and write hobby apps. What put me off was after paying I had to prove to Apple who I was by sending a scan of my (uk) passport. As a non US citizen my data has very little protection, so i requested a refund. It took a long time, but got a refund and made a small profit thanks to the exchange rate.
I had a similar thought back in 2014. I had only studied the maths required for various engineering courses I’d taken.
So, I decided I wanted to study maths for the maths.
I was in the fortunate position of being able to self fund myself through the Open University (uk based) Maths and Statistics BSc.
One module at a time I’m now on my last module.
There many things I’d studied before (calculus, sequences) and many new to me (group theory, graph theory)
Yes, I can set breakpoints in the C code and run the firmware on a Pico.
It’s all running on a Pi4, so it was just a matter of adding the debug pins on the Pico and configuring vscode (instructions followed in docs).
I’ve been doing the same, except I went one step further. I’m currently extending Micropython to add a DMA class to the RP2 port.
I can build and debug Micropython via VSCode and use Thonny to write some Python to test.
I could with the setup being a bit quicker (maybe an 8GB pi 4 would help)
Recently had water ingress on an Audi hybrid (thankfully covered by warranty). It turned out, after many calls, there is one service centre that could do the work in Scotland. It’s 250 miles away.
It would seem even the official channels are struggling to fix the vehicles.
Any young people looking for a career you won’t go far wrong training up to fix EV’s
I interviewed for a 6 month contract and there was a programming exercise.
My first question was, what unit test framework is available for the Python code they wanted me to write? “Errr, there isn’t one”.
Ok, let’s create a simple one first then.
I was offered the role, but I declined it.
I ported the rather nifty Psion 5 app called PhoneMan to the Palm pilots. It allowed managing address books and sending and reading sms messages. I never quite got around to finishing the picture message functionality.
I even had sync working with the Bluetooth module and an Ericsson phone.
I’m in my 50’s and I’m a much better golfer than I was in my 20’s. Partly club technology has enabled me to hit the ball more consistently and partly I now don’t try and hit the cover off the ball each shot :)
I’ve worked with a genuine 0.1x developer. Not only were they unproductive (which is fine if you are new or inexperienced in an area), but they actually reduced the productivity of others in the team.
I think sometimes this was deliberate as a plan to get the team reassigned.
Luckily I was a contractor and could largely ignore the politics and just get on with work.