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What field is that?
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A comedian huh?
That I could fix Windows PCs. Nope. When my work PC has issues, I call IT. I design computer chips.
Hey! Can I ask you about that? What type of chips? What are your most used skills/technologies and what helped get started when you were new? I want to work with fpgas, and I’d love to know what your experience with that has been like
I started with programming about anything that is programmable and not up on a tree at the count of three. I did industrial control units, and I worked on a Cray X-MP, and about anything between. I wrote computer games, compilers, an OS, database engines, and loads of applications. I’ve probably forgotten more programming languages than todays students have heard of. One day I ended up in embedded systems.
As our company had only one FPGA developer, I got sent on a three day course to learn VHDL from the source (Eugen Krassin, one of the original key developers of ISE). Right after that, I started developing FPGA firmware for our company. Luckily, I had some hardware experience from my work on the C64 and earlier, so I had a good understanding of clocks and signals. I know that even seasoned programmers really hit a wall when entering the world of HDLs.
I started with ISE back then on Spartan S3 and S6, then Xilinx f-ed us up so hard that the boss slammed the phone down after the last call with those guys and told me to find a more reliable company STAT. We now use Efinix FPGAs which has the big advantage that people there actually listen and help when I ask a question.
My field is isosynchronous low-latency networks for audio applications.
Woah, you’re on OG! I’m unfamiliar with a lot of those things and had to look them up. Crazy!
Hah! ISE - I used that for a hot second, and you still see tutorials using it as well.
My goodness, tell me about it, I’m new and I already find myself frustrated with Xilinx sometimes. It feels like there are very few resources from them for learning, but I thought that was just because it’s a niche subject. I’ll have to take a look at Efinix. I guess I thought it was safer to stick to the biggest name while I’m trying to get established. At the moment I’m trying to get some example projects working on a Zybo Z7. I’m finding out that it’s a lot to take in
Thanks for taking the time to reply! I feel strangely honored to hear from such an OG :) Cheers!
Whenever you are looking for a supplier for something, keep in mind that there are advantages and disadvantages when choosing one.
If you are in a small niece company, and your supplier is THE BIG OLD COMPANY, you are completely at their mercy. On the other hand, they usually have vast resources you can tap, like training capabilities and software you won’t get elsewhere, or at least nor for the price.
That was our relationship with Xilinx. Yes, you get trainings and tutorials for everything, and they have a “light” version of ModelSim thrown in for free in their IDE, but on the other hand, they basically cut us off from one day to the next. And that was not even our fault.
So we went looking and found Efinix. Small, but growing, their IDE has a few edges that need to be rounded off, and they can’t afford to throw in a free simulator, so we had to spend quite a few bucks to buy that (and it was not even ModelSim we bought, so I had to re-train). But at least they are open and helpful. You ask a question in their forum, and they come back to you to help. I’ve been talking to real people who are directly in contact with the dev team. When I had a strange compiler problem, I had a fix within 48 hours. THAT is gold in a supplier.
I’m finding out that it’s a lot to take in
Yes, indeed. The step from CPU-based programming languages to Hardware definition languages is hard for most programmers, and for some, it is even insurmountable. Once you get the hang of it, it gets way easier.
I met a student once in a Reddit sub once who had issues with her code. I helped her and gave her a few tips how to improve it, and at the end, she asked me of my opinion of the project. I told her that it was a nice little beginner project, something to pass a boring Friday afternoon. Her reply: “Thats my Bachelor Thesis!*”. What looks big and difficult to master will one day look simple and meek when you look back, so don’t let it drag you down if things don’t work on the first try.
That we IT people know everything about every bussiness application that is used in an org of more than 5 employees.
If I new that I would be automating your job and you would be out of a job.
no one QA’d this AAA game
Actually, that game breaking bug was caught weeks ago by QA. Unmoving deadlines set by upper management meant that a fix couldn’t be made in time for the content schedule.
That’s why bugs can be labeled “in shipped version.”
They know. It’s just they balanced it against everything else and it wasn’t worth spending time on or delaying the game for.
I won’t say that it’s purely a AAA problem, but it’s harder to excuse there.
Also, by the time the game has been released for 1 hour, the players have already racked up more playtime than the full QA team could reasonably achieve throughout several years of development (and for most of that time QA were playing an older version…). So, if your game has a lot of player choice, randomization, simulation, complex systems, chances are the players are seeing things that QA never did. And then the players wonder how QA could miss such an obvious bug.
I’ve mothballed multiple RCs from finding P0 issues by pure chance. In my experience, 90% of bugs are already caught by QA, 8% were isolated bugs that would realistically never get caught in QA, and 2% just slip through.
“IT is mainly introverts doing mysterious stuff no one understands”
It is a very cooperative field where everyone has different roles with different responsibilities, but everyone has a vague idea what everyone else is doing. Most of the time is spent making sure everyone else can also use the systems you build, not just yourself.
That grass is better than wild growth. Wait…
(IT support) I actually don’t know where that random setting in your application is, I’m just really fast and good at guessing from doing it a million times in applications I’ve never heard of before.
Similar to that, just because someone works in IT, doesn’t mean they can fix your computer problem. I’ve worked with a lot of developers who were great coders but couldn’t resolve networking or random OS issues.
Oh yes. I support a lot of developers, and being a good programmer is not the same as understanding networking in a corporate environment or even knowing anything about printers. That’s why I’m needed 😃
I’m a developer. Most of the time when I contact IT it’s because they broke something I rely on, like our vCenter appliance or network communications between some Linux appliances with static IPs.
That the folks in IT have any sway over microsoft or facebook’s ui plans.
NO Karen, I can not make Teams go back to the way it used to be. No matter how many times you ask.
I worked in food logistics before my current job.
People think baked goods in stores are fresh, many are packaged and flash frozen then defrosted when it arrives at the store. Even fresh baked stuff is often proofed then flash frozen, baked from frozen. Nobody but expensive bakeries has actual bakers anymore.
Was a cook at retirement home. Amount of pastries I’ve essentially warmed up are over easily over 10k
If I’m out can spot if someone is using that same Cisco pastry or Pillsbury scones lol
Not so much a professional field as a field of human experience, but being homeless.
People think the main things homeless people lack are:
- food and drink
- shelter
- money
In actuality, most homeless people have at least some of that stuff. What they tend to totally lack, creating the difficulty in living a civilized life of dignity, are:
- bathrooms/hygiene facilities
- security
- storage space
That IT people can pretty much fix anything like TVs, HVACs, stoves, water heaters, fridges, toasters, rice cookers, and many more.
Just because we work in tech, doesn’t mean we can deal with every technology known to mankind.
And no, we’re not certified electricians.
TVs, HVACs, stoves, water heaters, fridges, toasters, rice cookers,
Lol, rocket scientists wept
I mean… they’re not rocket science…
…not exactly brain surgery!
I had a lady I was helping with tech support ask me about her lightbulbs. I just told her I didn’t know the answer. She said “well you should know, it’s electronic.”
Sounds about right.
I think that comes from the fact that a lot of people got into computers by learning to take apart and fix things like that.
That, and the general populace has fuck all for troubleshooting skills.
The error on the screen tells you exactly what is wrong in plain English… But you got impatient and clicked past it.
(Unless the dev happened to not write the error messages, then you’re fucked or pay money for support)
error 0x5ac
contact customer support
That they could get the same level of table service if waitresses were paid a flat wage.
That waitresses rely on tips to make up for a deficient wage instead of the other way around.
That less ice will mean more drink in the glass.
That the 185°F water from the coffee machine will clean the silverware better than the much hotter sterilizing rinse of the industrial dishwasher.
That they should wait to complain to a manager instead of telling me right away if something is off so I can fix it.
Some folks have noticed the service you get in the States is shit, unless the wait staff identify you as someone who will give a good tip. If you’re from an ethnic group notorious for bad tipping, you’re never going to get good service, and so you’re never going to tip well… Continuing the cycle. 🤷🏻♀️
It’s not that it’ll clean better, but an additional rinse can’t hurt - especially if a utensil might have been crowded or rushed through the wash. Or maybe the waitstaffs hands are a bit suspect.
That less ice will mean more drink in the glass.
If the drink is filled to the same level on the glass, then less ice must mean more drink, right?
Unless you fill the drink first, and then add ice, in which case the drinks with ice would have higher water levels then those without ice.
For water and pop, sure.
For cocktails, not so much.
I ask for no ice because pop is pretty cold when it comes out anyways and I hate watered down pop. Also if I take it home I can put it in the fridge … and it doesnt get watered down.
Sure. But you’re be surprised how often someone asks for, say, a sangria without ice and then asks why the glass is only half full.
Fair enough! So they are trying to get out of paying for a double! I understand now. Tell them the glass is actually half empty!!! lol
Medical field here: The vast majority of us are not in it for the money. Physicians have to spend 3 to 9 years after medical school working for a wage that works out to about $5/hour to gain certification and a medical license in their specialty. And that’s after 8 to 12 years of undergraduate/graduate/doctorate education that basically has to be paid for with loans unless they’re in the military or come from a rich family. So, yes, physicians do make high salaries once they’re established, but there was a lot of work and sacrifice to get to that point, and very few people are masochistic enough to put themselves through that just for the money.
Also, the most expensive parts of a medical appointment/surgery/ER visit etc is the administrative overhead, inflated prices of drugs and supplies, and insurance company bullshit. Very little money from that price tag actually makes it to the healthcare workers. Your average EMT on an ambulance makes between $13-20/hour depending on the state minimum wage.
If you have a problem with your healthcare costs, that’s something to take up with your representatives in government, not the EMTs, CNAs, nurses, and physicians providing your care.
As a patient, the reason I’m complaining about healthcare costs is if you say something like “My job isn’t to worry about the money”. Well mine, as the patient, is. Sometimes it helps when I explain that financial stress is a predictor of heart disease, then they get where I’m coming from.
I need to know in advance how much this costs because I’m doing a cost-benefit analysis against other forms of harm that I can spend the money to avoid. And if you (the royal you, your entire profession) can’t understand how that could be a factor, I can translate the financial cost into morbidity statistics.
I’m in my third year of medical school, so I’ve just started my clinical rotations, but one of the things that shows up on almost every reference table for physicians regarding treatment options is information on the price for the patient. I’m rotating in a family medicine clinic right now, and we pretty frequently prescribe the best possible treatment, and then when the pharmacy runs it through the patient’s insurance and finds out how much it’s going to cost, we then start working down the list of next-best alternatives until we can find something the patient can afford. Because there are so many different insurance plans out there, we have no idea how much something is going to cost until the insurance tells us.
I understand that you don’t have the information. But the information is retrievable, just with way more delay than we need.
Each time I talk to you, to get a new prescription for the next-best thing, it costs me about $100.
If we could get all the information systems good enough, you could prescribe, insurance could quote, and you could re-prescribe in seconds.
<cough cough> single payer <cough cough>
Haha, most people here do tech it seems. Well, me too.
People seem to think I’d be good at maths and my entire job is like maths. I’m not and I don’t view it that way. There’s a lot of problem solving and engineering, but I find it very creative and expressive
I know, the proportion of professional tech people here shocked me. I know there’s a lot of like open source nerds and whatnot here but I only do that stuff as a hobby lol
That what I do is easy and that I’m “just pushing buttons”. Yeah, I’m pushing the right button at the right time because the whoke shebang has been program’d, cued, mixed over weeks of rehearsals so that, come show time, it’s all by magic. Magic of pushing the right button at the right time while also reading the brochure, watch the stage, issue cues to other dept sometimes in 2 different languages.
Easy peasy!
Stage manager? I’m not one myself, but I used to work in a theatre, and those people earn their money for sure. It’s an amazing talent to keep everything running so smoothly, and it rarely gets the credit it deserves.
Yup! Must say this stemmed from a not-so-long-ago public comment by a “lead actor” which later took an hour-long dressing down by the director straight through his face. He apologized.
