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Invisible wrote:
> - I sit in a corner by myself, building and testing the program. Every
> now and then another team member will casually ask me how it's going. I
> tell them it's going OK. They smile and nodd, and wander off.
I had one of those. The funny part was when the partners came back three
weeks later for the next project and said "You wanna work together
again?" Noooo...
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> This one, not so much, I'm basically basically n-tier hell.
That can be fun on a sufficiently large project. You know, like the
stuff google does. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Invisible wrote:
>> It sounds like you think very technically. What is you interest level
>> in electronics. There's plenty of heavy lifting math there ;-)
>
> My *interest level* is moderately high. My *knowledge level* is very low.
>
> (As in, I know how it's *supposed* to work. It just doesn't work that
> way when *I* do it.)
I bet that if you dedicate yourself to learning electronics the same way
that you dedicated yourself to playing the church organ and uploading
the file to youtube you could likely have something working.
Parts of digital electronics can be very simple - join wire a to wire b.
Some of it can get tricky, but most of the work has been done for you
and is packaged into nice chips.
Analog can get a bit more tricky. You have to calculate resistor values
and capacitor values to make things work. Then the parts you can
actually use have a tolerance of +-10% - but i calculated I needed a
2045 ohm resistor.....
Take a look at
http://www.amazon.com/Cmos-Cookbook-Donald-E-Lancaster/dp/0750699434
It's a pretty good book that gives some basics and provides enough
information to get started hooking thing up. I own it myself.
If you want to *program* something, then you need a microcontroller or
the like. BasicStamp is a good place to start that does not cost too
much to get started. You could look at their SX lineup that involves
raw assembly programming.
You can hook all of these up on a breadboard pretty easily - no
soldering needed. Start small - don't try to build a antonymous robot
the first time you light up a circuit.
There are a bunch of guys in here in Pr.O.T that know how this stuff
works - you can always ask questions.
Tom
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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> - I sit in a corner by myself, building and testing the program. Every
>> now and then another team member will casually ask me how it's going.
>> I tell them it's going OK. They smile and nodd, and wander off.
>
> I had one of those. The funny part was when the partners came back three
> weeks later for the next project and said "You wanna work together
> again?" Noooo...
Well, I mean, let's be honest about this. Only I have the skill required
to write programs beyond Hello World that actually compile, much less
execute in a way resembling the designer's intensions. So I did all the
coding. The guys were perfectly nice about it; they just lacked the
skills required to help me in any meaningful way.
What they *did* do is write all the GANT charts and other baloney that
we actually got marked on. So, in a way, it's actually *me* that got the
good deal! ;-)
But this has basically been my experience in every group project I've
ever worked on. I've never met any other students who can actually
program / do advanced math / comprehend complicated logic / etc.
Basically I'm always the only guy in the group with any kind of
technical skill.
(Although saying that... I *did* give some guy on my college course the
code to my Mandelbrot generator. Actually I didn't *give* him the code,
I just sat next to him and told him what to write. He seemed to be a
half-competent programmer. That is, I didn't have to tell him character
by character what to type, and he made lots of alterations after I went
away which didn't break the code...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Tom Austin wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>>> It sounds like you think very technically. What is you interest
>>> level in electronics. There's plenty of heavy lifting math there ;-)
>>
>> My *interest level* is moderately high. My *knowledge level* is very low.
>>
>> (As in, I know how it's *supposed* to work. It just doesn't work that
>> way when *I* do it.)
>
> I bet that if you dedicate yourself to learning electronics the same way
> that you dedicated yourself to playing the church organ and uploading
> the file to youtube you could likely have something working.
>
> Parts of digital electronics can be very simple - join wire a to wire b.
> Some of it can get tricky, but most of the work has been done for you
> and is packaged into nice chips.
>
> Analog can get a bit more tricky. You have to calculate resistor values
> and capacitor values to make things work. Then the parts you can
> actually use have a tolerance of +-10% - but i calculated I needed a
> 2045 ohm resistor.....
I actually have some breadboard and a stack of 7400s *somewhere*. (I
seem to have misplaced them currently.) I was going to try to build a
CPU... but I never actually got round to it.
(Actually, I got as far as not being able to get the chips to give me
the truth table I was expecting...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible escreveu:
> nemesis wrote:
> Hmm. Between the global telecommunications network (with its custom
> hardware and the recent craze for mobile phones), the
> multi-billion-dollar games industry, the presumably large industry
> making computer components (most of which require drives of some kind),
> the ever-increasing sea of consumer goods that need firmware to
> function, the financial institutions that build and run huge complex
> financial simulations, and the endless array of applications of DSP...
> those look like some pretty ****ing big niches to me! ;-)
Videogames sell a lot, but don't employ nearly as much as such huge an
industry should. Beat a game and read the credits listing: one or two
lead programmers, some main game and level designers, many beta testers
and one musician or band and many artists specialiazed in textures,
modelling and such.
Telecoms are mostly about networks and hardware, but, yes, hardware is
becoming more and more general purpose mobile computers and so,
programming should increase as well. But firmware writing is still a
niche for very few people.
I don't know, I have a feeling such huge niches do not employ people by
advertising jobs through conventional channels. I mostly never hear of
them. Either that or some fake "Senior Manager needed" ad will actually
get you as lead programmer of a firmware division... :P
>> It only exists within firms providing the infrastructure and research
>> everybody else employs to do their things. I'm talking about
>> Microsoft, Adobe, Sun, Autodesk, open source projects etc...
>
> Yeah - maybe I should get said to write open source software?
>
> Oh, wait...
You could try submitting your resumé to Novell, RedHat and the likes. ;)
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>> those look like some pretty ****ing big niches to me! ;-)
>
> Videogames sell a lot, but don't employ nearly as much as such huge an
> industry should.
Well, yeah, I guess that's true.
Games are a fairly high-risk industry; gotta plough in a crapload of
money, and at the end of it you might not even sell many units if the
game isn't that great.
More to the point, once the game exists, you can just keep selling and
selling it for basically no cost. (Think I'm joking? Valve are yelling
that I can buy Quake 2 for $10 or something now. How many years ago was
Quake 2??) Those programmers were only hired once, but a huge industry
is powered by the profits.
> I don't know, I have a feeling such huge niches do not employ people by
> advertising jobs through conventional channels.
Now *that* I won't disagree with at all.
I have no idea where these jobs are, but *I* can't find them...
>> Yeah - maybe I should get said to write open source software?
>>
>> Oh, wait...
>
> You could try submitting your resumé to Novell, RedHat and the likes. ;)
...are either of those companies still going? I thought Novell went
under years ago, and RedHat vanished off the face of the earth once they
realised that trying to sell Linux services isn't profitable.
I did look into a few companies such as IBM, HP, Nokia, etc. But they're
all based either in London or in other remote areas of the country.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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nemesis wrote:
> Videogames sell a lot, but don't employ nearly as much as such huge an
> industry should.
It's really not that huge an industry. Even software in general is
"niche" compared to, for example, construction or banking.
> I don't know, I have a feeling such huge niches do not employ people by
> advertising jobs through conventional channels.
Most jobs requiring competence don't advertise. It's mostly
word-of-mouth. And since it's not technically a profession (unlike, for
example, medicine or law), there's no minimum requirements where you can
hire anyone with the right certification and assume you're getting
someone at least minimally competent to do the job.
Plus, it seems most software places are utterly uninterested in someone
who could learn to do the job quickly but who don't already know all the
skills required. I haven't quite figured that out. "We need someone who
knows Java 1.5.7. You only list Java 1.5.4 on your resume."
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
> I actually have some breadboard and a stack of 7400s *somewhere*. (I
> seem to have misplaced them currently.) I was going to try to build a
> CPU... but I never actually got round to it.
>
> (Actually, I got as far as not being able to get the chips to give me
> the truth table I was expecting...)
>
When beginning, don't think that big - making your own CPU is cool, but
is very involved.
Think - "I want to make a counter" and wire up the chips to count.
A device like this can be very practicable - I use a BCD counter to
count windings on electromagnets that I make. 3 chips and a bunch of
breadboard wire. No computer or programmer required. Tho with a basic
stamp you could hook up something similar and do the counting in program
code.
Tom
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Tom Austin wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>
>> I actually have some breadboard and a stack of 7400s *somewhere*. (I
>> seem to have misplaced them currently.) I was going to try to build a
>> CPU... but I never actually got round to it.
>>
>> (Actually, I got as far as not being able to get the chips to give me
>> the truth table I was expecting...)
>>
>
> When beginning, don't think that big - making your own CPU is cool, but
> is very involved.
>
> Think - "I want to make a counter" and wire up the chips to count.
Well, as I say, I started by wiring up one NAND gate, a pair of switches
and an LED. What *should* have happened is that the LED lights up unless
you simultaneously press both switches. What *actually* happened was
completely different. :-/
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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