Re: Computer programmers' habits in electronics

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:15:30 -0800, John Larkin wrote:

> On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:28:17 -0800, Tim Wescott <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>>Ignoramus32515 wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 19:31:08 GMT, Rich Grise, but drunk <yahright@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:49:09 +0000, Ignoramus10397 wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:29:21 GMT, Rich Grise, but drunk <yahright@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Got any overflow work?
>>>>>
>>>>>I am sorry, what is overflow work.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>When you have so many customers that you can't fill the need, so you take
>>>>on outside help temporarily to take care of the overflow. You know, like
>>>>"My cup runneth over", but of work?
>>>>
>>>>I'm kinda looking for some stuff where I could telecommute; I know just
>>>>enough C and perl to get myself in trouble, and can do hobbyist-level
>>>>electronics - I used to be able to slap together uC circuits, but I
>>>>don't really have a proper lab these days.
>>>>
>>>>I'm wondering if I should look around for proofreader work, or does
>>>>anybody bother to have anything proofread these days?
>>>
>>>
>>> Sorry, nothing that I can think of, of the sort.
>>>
>>> Somewhat tangentially...
>>>
>>> We are interviewing people for computer programmer positions. We are
>>> looking for those who can actually "do stuff" without too much
>>> babysitting.
>>>
>>> Lots of people come in with impressive resumes. When I talk to them, I
>>> know that some peope are very good at bullshitting, so I give them a
>>> couple of actual tasks to do. Very small simple things. One is to
>>> write a nice function that reverses a string in place. For example,
>>> "Rich" would become "hciR".
>>>
>>> Almost no one can actually do this without making mistakes, many
>>> people give up completely.
>>>
>>> Very frustrating. I consider it the most basic capability of a
>>> programmer.
>>>
>>> i
>>>
>>Someone who likes to ask that question told me of an interviewee who got
>>as far as saying "I think it involves recursion...".
>>
>>So I wrote a version that did it using recursive function calls and sent
>>it to her. I don't know if I would have gotten the job -- they had
>>already made the mistake of hiring me.
>>
>>Good thing the PC has a lot of stack space.
>>
>>For interviewing embedded SW engineers we finally settled on a fairly
>>basic scaling problem. We started with a little story problem that
>>required the interviewee to find the ratio of a couple of numbers and
>>multiply it to a third, then we said "oh, by the way, our floating point
>>library is too slow -- do it with integers". The question usually took
>>about 40 minutes to explore fully, with some folks never getting it and
>>some just glancing at the board and writing down the correct answer.
>>
>>It's amazing how you can separate the desktop programmers from the
>>embedded engineers with that one.
>
> Sure. I never use floating point in embedded stuff.
>
> Who was it that said "If you have to use floating point, you don't
> understand the problem"?
>
> John

I once did an RMS in a 68HC11 by using LUTS, but realized on the bench
that it didn't make a significant difference in the regulation. It
was just a(an?) SCR phase control power supply (well, smart industrial
battery charger, 24V 40A), and so I had really loose tolerances to work
with, so I went with simple. Unfortunately, at the time, I missed the part
about "cheap", so it never made it to market. )-;

Thanks,
Rich


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