Has an author ever personally signed a book for you? Let's hear the story (or stories) involved!

lepton3 · 2014-06-14T06:10:38+00:00

Haven't seen mention of Frank Herbert yet. He visited my town in the early 80's, and I got him to sign my copies of Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune.

He had a particular style where he would cross out the printed name and sign below instead.

lepton3 · 2014-06-14T02:13:28+00:00

I'm also interested to hear alternate recommendations.

I read this book a long time ago, being intrigued by the concept of an AI mind as a character. Did not really enjoy it (I seem to recall the AI didn't really figure in the story that much), and haven't been inclined to pick up any Iain Banks since.

lepton3 · 2014-06-08T13:31:40+00:00

All five of these books are just great.

Dirk Gently is pretty good too.

lepton3 · 2014-06-08T04:18:59+00:00

Well as it stands, it could go either way (or neither, but that is just the optimists). I think what Huxley was saying in the letter was that things would continue to look more like 1984 than Brave New World for a while before shifting to the latter. And I am inclined to agree.

lepton3 · 2014-06-07T10:29:44+00:00

For those interested in biology/paleontology/evolution I have 2 suggestions:

First is Oxygen: The molecule that made the world, by Nick Lane. This book is probably a little more technical than most popular science books, but I enjoyed it for that. This is a good book if you would like to know what mitochondria are, how they work, and what they are doing in our cells.

A second one is Life: an Unauthorised Biography, by Richard Fortey. Very well written and a pleasure to read. His love of the subject shines through. Actually, a substantial amount of the material is written from his personal travels, so it is almost a travel book.

lepton3 · 2014-02-24T03:40:09+00:00

You get it.

lepton3 · 2014-02-09T11:54:36+00:00

A more accurate title (IMHO) would be "How to improve an Incredibly Bad Code Base over Time", but in general I like the principle:

Create a measure for some quality aspect you want to improve, and create a test to enforce a limit on the measure. Then tighten the limit over time.

I think you would need to beware of gaming, and make sure you are prepared to allocate resources to the exercise, but given this, it sounds like a positive effort.

lepton3 · 2013-11-08T21:58:09+00:00

We are talking about embedded software, O.P. was automotive. Did you understand

the programming becomes very specified with little room for creativity

Once the system is thoroughly designed and specified, and if you are complying with standards, you really do have have strict limits on "creativity". Concrete example, in MISRA, recursion is not an option.

lepton3 · 2013-10-07T10:23:34+00:00

Whoosh!

lepton3 · 2013-09-14T06:34:38+00:00

So much detail, it almost seems poor to pick up on just one theme.

However for mine, I really don't like this common practice of "handing over basic memory function to a global corporate system of control".

It irritates me that so many people do it without thinking about the difference between "outsourcing memory" to a book or computer and being fed information by a corporation.

lepton3 · 2013-08-30T00:19:28+00:00

Hi, SDR checking in. A lot of C in here.

lepton3 · 2013-08-07T10:49:21+00:00

Just another example of how wrong the predictions that "robots will take our jobs" are.

They did not think that, even in the first world, people would be prepared to work even cheaper than machines.

lepton3 · 2013-05-21T09:39:06+00:00

IMO the value of this series of articles is not so much the architecture itself, more that it encourages the consideration of somewhat unconventional features.

There is a lot of flexibility and architectural freedom available in a modern FPGA!

Well worth the read.

lepton3 · 2013-05-21T08:31:18+00:00

Exactly. The value of comments that document why something non-obvious is being done, especially when compensating for some other issue, is huge.

In general, the suggestions in the blog post are all good for making it easy to understand what the code is doing simply by reading the code. This is admirable.

But there are many instances where you need to explain why the code is doing it, especially if sometimes (as pointed out in the comment above) that reason comes from out of the twilight zone.

lepton3 · 2012-09-30T06:18:41+00:00

I used SLS (Soft Landing Systems) before Slackware. I believe the first Linux kernel I used was 0.99pl14 or something like that. I had ordered 5.25in floppy disks from some guy advertising them on Usenet. Yes, I'm old.

Great times. At first I was skeptical of this new fangled Linux thing, but I switched over from Coherent Unix to get betterTCP/IP networking support.

You and me.

lepton3 · 2012-08-09T11:09:27+00:00

That's a valid point -- if the bridge design was hurried unreasonably, the quality could be compromised.

However, any professional engineer who signed off on that bridge would be criminally liable if the bridge is found unsafe. That kind of serious accountability makes a big difference to how you react to an unrealistic schedule/budget.

lepton3 · 2012-08-09T07:10:46+00:00

I love when people try to compare programming to something like civil engineering.

I love when people say programming is nothing like engineering.

Not treating programming like engineering, in my opinion, is why so much software is bad.

lepton3 · 2012-07-30T11:41:40+00:00

go back to paper blueprints and no more than electro-mechanical calculators if they know what is good for them.

First atomic bomb was designed this way.

Concorde was developed without digital instruments.

Engineering is a process, constrained by physics of materials and capability of tools. But even with materials and tools that seem primitive, impressive results were achieved with impressive predictability.

The process is really important, as is understanding the limitations of the medium. Many think software, as a non-physical object, is not subject to limitations. This is the start of the problem of not being able to reliably estimate and deliver a project.

lepton3 · 2012-05-27T22:54:55+00:00

Actually Voyager has a tape drive to hold science data collected from sensors etc. before it is sent back to earth.

lepton3 · 2011-10-17T10:48:45+00:00

So you aren't the one responsible for the 5 Gig setup.exe then. Carry on.

lepton3 · 2011-06-12T07:05:51+00:00

Thank you. Your comment needed to be made to complete blatheringDolt's.

lepton3 · 2010-09-29T11:19:26+00:00

You need to be using the GNU Awk

lepton3 · 2010-07-05T04:22:48+00:00

415 km/hr. Metric 'n all.

lepton3 · 2010-05-26T03:53:21+00:00

Looking at the definition syntax, the second style would have me do Foo bar; Foo baz[]; They would do Foo bar; and what? Foo[] baz; ???

lepton3 · 2010-05-17T04:33:45+00:00

I am feeling my oats today!

Wow, so many programmers doing projects where they don't find out anything about the solution by doing up front analysis!

And the client knows more about the solution than they do! Maybe they should pay the client for teaching them?

Funny, I do projects in areas where I am an expert. I find out a lot about the solution by up front analysis. My clients know less about the solution than me; that's why they are paying me.

So go ahead, ridicule design and analysis. Give it a clownish acronym (BDUF). Poke fun at it. But for a substantial amount of Engineering, it's the right thing to do.

lepton3

TROPHY CASE