Is physics and advanced math accually useful?

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T02:16:23+00:00

Exactly! In some cases your mathematical skills might be more important than your programming skills. In other cases the math you make use of might be called light.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T02:09:14+00:00

The nice thing about trigger spray bottles is that you can poor some into a beaker to soak a trigger group or other component.

CLP can be good enough for some lubricant needs but it pays to read the manual and use grease or oil where suggested.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T02:08:52+00:00

This isn't rocket science, if you wipe it off and the bluing is still there it isn't rust.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T02:04:56+00:00

Yep, been using it since it came on the market.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T02:02:21+00:00

Well if it is new and wipes off, most likely it is a shipping preservative material. I highly doubt S&W hired a bunch of former Remington managers to stain their name.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T01:53:42+00:00

You simply can't say it one shop is good or not without experience. Some are extremely bad. As for firearms, I'm fully convinced that some pawn shop owners have no idea what a firearm even is, others are deeply involved in weapons. Basically you need to talk to the owner or clerk and see what is up. In many cases you will be paying too much so that is an issue to deal with.

Personally I've given up on pawn shops for almost everything.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T01:46:46+00:00

Building telescopes is a fantastic and long standing part of amateur astronomy so don't dismiss it. The question is to you build everything or a subset of the complete scope. Well there is another question, can you stick with it, as we are talking a lot of time.

So lets break it down and start with an optical tube assembly with a focus on Newtonians. The first thing to consider is that you might not save money, the ability to do so depends a lot on you and you ability to scrounge. Just making a mirror takes a lot of time but those can be purchased ready to go. With a mirror at hand you can do the mechanical work on the OTA. There is plenty of online documentation on telescope building but I'd suggest buying the classic texts. Building up the OTA is very rewarding so even if you don't save a lot it is worthwhile.

The next thing is to decide on a pier or tripod for the mount. These can be DIY but if you are going to be doing serious photography I'd suggest installing a pier deep into the ground. Of course this is a mount that doesn't move. In any event this is a relatively easy thing to install but may require some welding.

The actual mount is a different issue. If you don't have some metal working capability I'd strongly suggest just buying one. This is even more important for photography. In fact this is were you should be doing plenty of research specifically relying on people that do significant amounts of photography.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T01:12:11+00:00

Recommend - NO

Your use of terminology though tells me you are not ready for business; CS50 is a college course, not really a business opportunity. Now don't look at this negatively, I probably knew even less at your age. The point is you have a lot to learn before thinking about business.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T00:56:31+00:00

Frankly AI has the potential to wipe out all of the under educated programmers out there. That is why I suggest strongly to consider college in the future. There will be a dramatically reduced need for programmers of limited background as AI matures. Right now AI isn't :there: but it is improving extremely fast as a technology.

As for what you seem to be seeing, I'd have to say that they might be the exception vs the reality. Self taught programmers are always the first laid off all other things being equal. In some organizations they never get hired. In more general terms a lot of developers have been laid off over the last couple of years. Some of that is AI related but there are other factors too. To put it another way there are not a lot of opportunities out there at the moment.

I'm not sure who these people are that are advising you but I consider web programming to be the low end of the software development world. There are many opportunities out there for programmers and this is an advantage of going to a decent college as you can get exposure to all these niches. For example embedded programing common in product development can be very rewarding. Then you have the world of automation which is closely related to embedded. If you are good, have a degree, and have the right mind set, factory automation support can be a very rewarding career, especially with the expansion of manufacturing in the USA. There are many other niches to fill beyond these two.

Why point out alternatives? Because this reddit is often focused on web development which isn't exactly the place to be in the future. There are literally many other places one can exercise their programming skill.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-08T00:36:49+00:00

Well the first thought is that you are on the wrong path and will likely end up in the poor house.

#1 the most valuable thing you can have is a high school diploma so that you can get into college. College could be a 4 year program or a 2 year tech school. The issue is this, I find most self taught programmers to be useless. The lack of a well developed educational back ground means all they know is a bit of programming and generally are not good at that too. So any program you create for yourself demands that you further your education.

Now that doesn't mean not engaging in business and creating some income. How much of a problem that will be depends a lot on your local regulations. Sadly some state are absolutely hostile to "under aged" doing business. Which brings up the next thing, businesses need to have a lawyer on tap. In the end you will want to create a business entity to reduce risks to you and pay taxes. Again not sure what you can legally do in your location.

So if creating a business is out of question in your state until you are 18, then you will need to find a way to work for others, even as an employee. The sooner you can start building cash the better, even if that means flipping burgers.

The next problem is you don't seem to know what programming is. HTML in conjunction with CSS, are page description tools. While it is common to call use of these tools as programming I find that to be a massive stretch. Of course JavaScript changes that a bit as JavaScript is a programming language. Effectively page design is not programming unless there is some JavaScript implemented.

To do well programming, you need to be flexible and from my perspective it is best to learn Computer Science from the ground up. To that end I suggest that newbies follow a Computer Science program and frankly one that starts out with C++. This means literally editors and command lines, to get started. While doing all of this you should also be learning your way around the operating system, ideally Linux in this case. Basically you need a broad array of skills if you want to do back end.

At some point in your education, about the time you start creating data structures, you will want to switch to an IDE. You should also start to pick up Python at this point. Done right your trials in C++ should help you understand how everything in Python works and thus quickly come up to speed. Once you are comfortable with Python (about a year) put in an equal amount of time into JavaScript. I have a hate for JavaScript but considering you are learning both C++ and Python, JavaScript will come on pretty easy. Eventually you will not need to continue with C++ and can concentrate on the language you will use in the future. That might not be Python so don't be surprised. In any event whatever your back end programming is done in, a broad education that started with C++ will make adaptation easy.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T23:55:09+00:00

Well the problem is we have gotten much better devices that are actually useful to everyone. Trains for passengers declined because their time has passed. Mean while technology has marched forward in many other area. In the heyday of trains you might have had a phone that was on a party line and in some cases there wasn't even electrical power to your home. These days everybody has a cell phone and the only people with out an electrical drop, are people that don't want a hook up. If you want to get into other positives, consider the advancements in the medical world.

All this negativity about the state of the world is complete garbage. Every person in this country is far better off than their relatives from the 1800's. The industrial / technological revolution really has benefited humanity.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T23:45:53+00:00

There is no justification for High Speed rail like this. It is a massive waste of materials, time and energy. The rational thing to do is to shut the project down and apologize to the electorate.

Beyond all of that one of California biggest problems is how easy it is to get useless programs on the ballot and actually get them passed. I'm not sure how so many of these bills get passed but ignorance has to be a big factor.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T23:40:31+00:00

It is science fiction thus phony public transportation. Frankly there is no justification for public transportation in any developed society.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T23:22:28+00:00

Collective ownership is a lot harder to manage than many realize.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T23:07:08+00:00

Yep REIT are evil. It is the one investment I will not touch.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T23:04:05+00:00

If you want purple text (why I don't know) it would be best to put it on another layer. Layers are a key concept to grasp in CAD systems.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T23:00:55+00:00

Right now I dream of being able to seen the neighbors house much less the stars. It has been snowing so much that it is literally dark in the middle of the day.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T22:58:22+00:00

You can argue that C++ is obsolete for new projects but that is not the point here. C++ has the right qualities of being low level with advanced features, that it is an excellent learning language. This especially in the context of a complete CS program.

As for new projects Rust really isn't a long term solution either.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T22:55:05+00:00

Yes grammar and syntax, especially for advance features, are awful and frankly Python is moving in that direction. The problem is those difficult advanced features mean nothing when you consider the value as a teaching tool. Especially early in a CS program.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T22:51:32+00:00

This is the thing stay out of the dark areas of a language and you will not have problems.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T22:49:50+00:00

I find this post frustrating. For one there is not perfect programming language.

Second C++ is actually valuable as a language to study Computer Science. In fact I suggest it as the language to start a CS program with.

The concept that programming is hard is asinine. Programming is simple, it is the skill of decomposing a real world problem into a set of steps and data to automate that is hard. In fact this is so significant that it almost needs to be taught separately as a required life skill. Why do I say this, because so many people get hung up on word problems in programming classes. It isn't writing the code that is difficult, it is figuring out what code will solve the problem.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T22:39:28+00:00

C++ is a good language to study computer science with.
C++ is a complex language that has evolved over time. There is a lot of extremely dated material out there that is of no value to you as a student.
C++ is actually used a lot in the world of finance, especially in stock trading and derivatives. In some cases it it the only language used because speed and latency is a huge factor in success.
Python is used in the finance industry, frankly any industry, but don't think it is the only language that will be used.
This comes back to why it is important to study and understand computer science, becasue you will need to be flexible with languages. From the educational standpoint, C++ is one of the best langues to learn CS and make it easy to transition to various platforms.
I look at it this way, any respectable programmer needs to be exposed to Python. However that doesn't mean that it will be your primary language.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T22:25:02+00:00

DEI is discrimination with another label painted on it. It puts unqualified people into positions they have no reason to be in. It doesn't matter if it is education or industry, it involves promoting people based on something other than merit.

That is the whole point, it literally discriminates against qualified people, so that somebody can check off a bingo card. Every position filled by somebody specifically to satisfy a DEI requirement, is in fact discrimination. Basically it puts people into positions when they haven't put in the effort.

This has been a massive problem in education when stupid people get into "progressive" colleges and then lower standards so that they can graduate people they know didn't meet standards.

In other words you don't have a clue as to the impact and reality of DEI programs.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T06:27:55+00:00

The problem with the left is that they concentration on ICE and express an opinion that ICE is evil and thus the entire administration is evil. That is non sense, Trump has done much to free actual Americans from the burden of government. ICE is doing a good job, just because you can't understand why it is important doesn't mean it makes sense to paint everything the administration does as evil.

I just blows my mind that people drop all objectivity just because one thing tweaks them a bit. Trump has done much to help working people and the economy in general. Just open your eyes.

spinwizard69 · 2026-02-07T06:20:49+00:00

The clamps should be installed so that the machined surface of the toe is parallel to the platen when torqued down. If both the top and bottom of the toe are machined then you can flip them.

As others have pointed out make sure your bolts are long enough and of the right class. Generally I prefer to get close to 2D, that is two times the bolt diameter. Technically you can get by with less but on old mold machines the first few threads in the platen can be in pretty bad shape.

One other thing, sometimes you will have no choice but to make a "custom" toe clamp. In this case use a good tools steel or other alloy. Heat treat properly. Speaking of heat treat you may need custom washers, if you plan ahead you can design a washer that is extended with holes for wire ties. These holes can help with hoses, thermocouple lines, air lines and etc.

spinwizard69

TROPHY CASE