a c i d.f l y
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IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.
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tyen
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Whats the most annoying is those people are the ones that create scope and timelines for technical products/services and have absolutely no idea what actually goes into creating something.
I regularly get pushed a month back on everything just because those types don't understand that you need proper technical guidance if you want something specific.
9 times out of 10 when I do a project for someone, they leave it so vague that I have to redo major parts of the application because it didn't fit their hidden vision.
Its super annoying and pushed me into charging people per hour instead of by project unless its over 10k.
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
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I'll be the annoying guy "I'm not technicaL". They are trying to integrate some calculations we've done in our head/by hand for years.
Not a computer person/programmer in the least. But I've been tasked to debug and track down a problem in someones program. Apparently me and the programmer aren't talking the same language which is no suprise. He's getting odd mathmetical results and I asked if he could just display the variables as they are calculated so I could follow along and figure out where the problem was. He said that's really too difficult to impliment. I really didn't want to go thru the stuff line by line and doing all the calculations by hand. The answers come out in the right format, but not correct.
For isntance it might have 40 user inputs and 60 read from a database that never changes and then give a dozen calculations based on those and the conditions set in the user inputs. Asking too much? It's not really my deal kind of a "favor". He gave me a lit of what each variable in his program is supposed to represent.
Not a computer person/programmer in the least. But I've been tasked to debug and track down a problem in someones program. Apparently me and the programmer aren't talking the same language which is no suprise. He's getting odd mathmetical results and I asked if he could just display the variables as they are calculated so I could follow along and figure out where the problem was. He said that's really too difficult to impliment. I really didn't want to go thru the stuff line by line and doing all the calculations by hand. The answers come out in the right format, but not correct.
For isntance it might have 40 user inputs and 60 read from a database that never changes and then give a dozen calculations based on those and the conditions set in the user inputs. Asking too much? It's not really my deal kind of a "favor". He gave me a lit of what each variable in his program is supposed to represent.
alavaz
Trakanon Raider
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Find out what (if any) IDE he uses. Most of them should include a debugger that can do this relatively easy, well - unless of course he is using a 3rd party library to do the calculation.
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Kind of my first thought as well. I gave him a detailed list of what needed to be done and the UI part should have been icnrediably basic, no graphics just "input X, Y, Z, output A, B, C," even without any descriptors of what was need or output. The operator would know. I have a very very old copy of the same exact thing done in basic maybe 30 years ago that I forwarded to him to make sure he had all the calculations right. That didn't help. Even if he couldn't run it you would think he could look at it.
I don't know where they got the guy. I was just asked to track down the issue. My first thought was find someone else. Once they get it going they want to import the info into some CNC machines and I can't see having any confidence in when it comes to working on a production item instead of just looking at the output.
Asshat wormie
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What kind of calculations are going on? Is it just basic arithmetic or something fancier? Usually if I built the calculations myself instead of using libraries and my outputs are tarded the first place I look are the equations.
As a quick example, I am learning a new language and was building some basic linear algebra routines. I of course missed a negative sign in one place and was getting stupid fuck results. Happens all the time, check the maths!
As a quick example, I am learning a new language and was building some basic linear algebra routines. I of course missed a negative sign in one place and was getting stupid fuck results. Happens all the time, check the maths!
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Lot of trigonometric calcs but it's all just pretty simple Sine, Cosine, Tangent, Cotangent of a few user supplied variables - stuff that I and 99% of the others who do this all use calculators for just this when in the field/shop - not having to do any of it when drawing in cad. I'm sure there are libraries you can get with all that stuff, just like the ones to convert foot/inch to decimal before doing the calculations.
I asked him to ditch the foot/inch conversion first and we would just put in decimal numbers and check the math and then the conversion. We'll see how that goes. It puts out numbers that look "close" like they could be right at first glance, but aren't. I guess that's better than looking for 43.45 and geting 10,034,342 or something.
Just feel like if it displayed each variable as you went I could track it down pretty quick. But when you enter 3 items and it does a dozen calculations and gives you a wrong answer it's very difficult for me to track down the issue looking from the outside.
I asked him to ditch the foot/inch conversion first and we would just put in decimal numbers and check the math and then the conversion. We'll see how that goes. It puts out numbers that look "close" like they could be right at first glance, but aren't. I guess that's better than looking for 43.45 and geting 10,034,342 or something.
Just feel like if it displayed each variable as you went I could track it down pretty quick. But when you enter 3 items and it does a dozen calculations and gives you a wrong answer it's very difficult for me to track down the issue looking from the outside.
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Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
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I downloaded Visual Studio and muddled thru it for a few and made a very very very program that would do the math that I think he was getting off on. I did it in C++ only because I didn't know any better and didn't know the difference between that and C#, skipped Visual Basic for no particular reason, java was the only other option. I skipped the convert foot/inch to decimal and instead just made a very very simple almost hello world "input this, output that" and it came up with the right answers. I forwarded it to him and we will see. Not sure what the original specs where but a foot/inch conversion is not even needed on the back end since it's eventually going to a CNC machine and doesn't understand that anyway. So anyway muddled thru to get calculate a bevel given the rise and run and slope of said triangle and slope given X amount of offset on each end. Most of it I googled and stole someone elses code and threw it in.
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Asshat wormie
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Asshat wormie
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Not having to rebuild every time you make a tiny adjustment just to see how your output changes is great when the goal is to examine the output. The fact that I can directly interact with whatever data is being manipulated is priceless. On top of that you can insert discussion, images and latex between code blocks. Plus you can easily export to different file formats for presentations and papers and blog posts and all kinds of other shit. Its all the benefits of notebooks and now with C++. Much hype.
Asshat wormie
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Oh god. I worked on a really ugly computational topology library a few years back. Professor had me converting his ancient C code to C++ 11/14. We confirmed the results by running his other, less than stellar, libraries which (mostly) generated heat maps using discrete geometry routines. Every time I had to recompile it, it took ages. I wonder how much time I would have been able to save if i had a functional notebook like environment, probably a few weeks if not months.
Asshat wormie
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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He's the Dev Manager lol. Strategy we've been using is to just start talking about programming shit and he usually shuts up because he has no idea what we're talking about.
It's painful though. I sent an email with three very questionable method calls that check the integrity of the data 7 times every time you go through some tabs in this application or do anything (1 is needed unless you select new data or change something, then you'd just need another one). But it seems to trigger this no matter what you do and constantly. Since we have 20k users on this it will obviously make our scaling dogshit when we have actual users and not the 30 devs/50 QA in there.
Anyway, the application is making excessive calls to the DB to do its datacheck through some portion of the app I didn't make. Dev manager is all, "but no changes to the code were made this isn't a problem."
lolwut?
That and he had the genius idea of intentionally creating silos of development in this project before I got on it. He had one dude only work on this module or that module as he defined them and made zero effort to ensure the global framework was consistent. Which resulted in filters and calculations and what have you functioning completely differently in each module rather than being a global call. All kinds of dumb shit. It's astounding.
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