mrlyc

When I was writing device drivers for the middleware people, I found that unit tests were useful for testing the code and making sure the hardware was doing what it was supposed to. Along with the drivers, I released the test code to middleware so they could use it in their own code.

This sounds great! I have 680 GB of podcasts recorded at 128 kbps which equates to 1.35 years of constant listening. I could definitely listen at a higher speed while doing housework, gardening or washing the dishes. I'd be concerned about doing it while driving, though, as that requires (for me, at least) a lot of concentration.

When interviewing potential employers, I ask them

1. Do you conduct regular peer reviews of your documentation and code?

2. Do you have a bug tracking system?

I joined Mensa and wasn't too impressed. Their attitude towards intelligence is like that of a teenage boy who thinks he knows how to drive fast just because he has a car with a big engine. Skill and effort are required, not just raw mental horsepower.

Librarian here. There is no pleasure of stumbling upon a book in the wrong place.

At a motorcycle club party, one of the people there revealed that he was a motorcycle mechanic. Big mistake.

I like solving puzzles so I'm quite happy to fix computers for free for friends, family and my neighbour who is chronically ill. I also volunteer at our local community computer centre.

I did draw the line at fixing them for free for one of the centre's customers. Both he and his wife are working, they have two cars and own their own home so, after spending two four hour sessions at their home, I directed him to one of the commercial home-visiting operations. He has younger-onset dementia so teaching him to use a computer was challenging. He'd forget half of what I showed him and get the other half wrong.

I kept getting email messages from Facebook after I deleted my account. They stopped after I lodged a complaint with the Australian Communications and Media Authority. It enforces the Spam Act (2003) which prohibits the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages with an Australian link, i.e. if it originates or was commissioned in Australia or originates overseas but was sent to an address accessed in Australia.

> People who park on the street have no realistic way to charge their cars at their homes

Perhaps there could be combined parking meters and charging stations. You would pay a certain amount of money if you just wanted to park and you would pay more if you wanted to charge your car too.

I do this by bringing samples of my code and documentation.

My favourite is "Targeting Safety-Related Errors During Software Requirements Analysis" by Robyn Lutz at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It's available at https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/35179/93-0749...

The article provides a safety checklist for use during the analysis of software requirements for spacecraft and other safety-critical, embedded systems.

I'm still using an outliner called PC Outline 3.34. My manager gave me a copy in 1986, saying "Here, you're organised. You'll like this" and he was right. I bought a copy and have been using it every day since then for todo lists, shopping lists and functional decomposition. As it's an old DOS program, I have to run it in DOSBox on Linux or vDos on Windows 7.

I'm sticking with 3.34 as the 3.37 version has some bugs and the 1.00 version for Windows has a lot of them.

In 1984, I wrote a BBS for the Commodore Vic-20 which had up to 63 public and private rooms (message areas), private email and an online game, all in 9.6K of BASIC. Users could start their own rooms and make them public or private. The topics covered everything from general chitchat to string theory. The board was very popular with each user spending an average of 70 minutes on it.

One of my users said "Anyone who can write a BBS for a Vic-20 can program!" and hired me to write code for MSI portable data terminals. That same guy now wants me to work with him at Google.

Really? I'm 63 and Google in both Mountain View and Sydney are after me.

Photography and weightlifting. Back in the old days of film with two camera bodies, a motor drive, tripod and five lenses, I could combine the two. Now that I have a more sensitive digital camera with one zoom lens, I have to go to the gym.

The motor on my mum's Singer Featherweight model 3-120 sewing machine runs on 110-120 volts 25-75 cycles AC and DC. It was made around 1950.

I've worked for a number of startups and observed that some people are great at collecting money but don't know how to spend it wisely after getting it, just as some politicians are great at getting elected but don't know how to govern.

I have very limited time for reading but lots of time for listening while I'm washing the dishes or travelling. When I find a book that looks interesting, I download an interview with or presentation by its author from YouTube, convert it to an MP3 then listen to it.

It depends on the company. One place I worked at instituted a bonus system with the result that programs were released on time, buggy or not, as releasing them late would have reduced the managers' bonuses. I raised a stink about that by repeatedly saying "We really must inspect the code before the product ships." I was sidelined and let go early when the company shrank to a shadow of its former self, infested by people who were more interested in furthering their career than doing the job.

The next company I worked at was very serious about quality. When I started working there, I was told that I was allowed one bug in my code. If there were a second one, I would be fired. I'm not sure if that was true as my code didn't have any (found) bugs. It was thoroughly inspected by two senior engineers before I could even run it on the test bench. We were some months behind schedule but there was not one word about reducing the quality to catch up.

The first company made communications equipment, the second one an air traffic control system.

That article reminds me of The Auditors in Terry Pratchett's "The Thief of Time" who try to analyse a painting by reducing it to its component molecules.

There is no mention of tailoring comments and replies to the target audience. Once I adopted the mindset of a senior high school or college student and posted accordingly, I was able to increase my karma on Reddit from 1,000 per year to 1,000 per month.

I still haven't managed to crack Hacker News, though. Tough audience.

In 1984, I wrote a BBS for the Commodore Vic-20 with up to 64 "rooms" (message areas), email and an online game. Users could create a room and make it public or private. The board was very popular with users spending an average time of 70 minutes on it.

That's how I started programming professionally. One of my friends hired me as a programmer, saying "Anyone who can write a BBS for a Vic can program!" Thirty-three years later, that same friend wants me to work with him at Google.

I never have enough time to read so I've turned my anti-library into audio files. Whenever I hear of an interesting book, I look up the author's name on YouTube to find out if they've given an interview or a talk about the book. I then download the video and convert it to an MP3.

Having been burned more than once, the questions I now ask are:

"Do you conduct regular peer reviews of code and documentation?"

"Do you have a bug tracking system?"

Oh yes. I used to work with one who wouldn't let the programmers print anything. He once stormed into the programming room after someone called and asked to leave a message for one of the programmers. "In my next company," he yelled, "there will be no phone system!" He also bragged about taking a whole year to pay a bill. Creative accounting was used to calculate my wages, something I didn't realise until after I had left as there were no payslips.

When I write code, I keep the target audience in mind. That target audience is a maintenance programmer doing their first programming job.

In addition to MISRA, I've found the safety checklist in Lutz's "Targeting Safety-Related Errors During Software Requirements Analysis" at https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/35179/93-0749... to be very useful.

At one place I worked, programmers weren't allowed to print anything and creative accounting was used to calculate our wages, something I didn't realise until I left as there were no payslips. One time, the CEO came storming into the programming room, extremely upset that someone had called the company and asked to leave a message for a programmer. "At my next company" he yelled, "there will be no phone system!" Another time, he waltzed into the room and proudly announced that he had taken a whole year to pay a bill.

Do what you love, what you are good at and what people are willing to pay for.

> “Give me 48 cents using six coins. Tell me quantity and value of the six coins.”

That's easy. 2 x 20c and 4 x 2c.

Nobody said the coins had to be American and still in circulation.

I found that doing endian conversion for a system using both PCI and VME buses was quite a challenge.

I also found it a challenge writing Linux device drivers for chips with an external 32 bit bus and an internal 16 bit one. The 32 bit data had to be split into two, set the data pins for the first half, set a bit saying the data was available, wait for it to be read in and repeat with the second half. Do the reverse for reading.

Also challenging was setting the bits in a register for a chip with multiple commands per register. My program checked the input data for an error, e.g. trying to set three bits to 128, read the register, masked out the bits to be changed, changed them, wrote the value, read the register, masked out the bits and checked them to make sure they had been changed.

Then there was the time the board manufacturer changed the memory map of the board without telling us. Boards made before April would boot, newer ones didn't.

I also found that some device drivers from SOC chip manufacturers had to be debugged before I could use them.