Programming

I am ready to quit my nice job and go dig holes with a spoon.

I work in a BioTechnology firm that manufactures "assay" technology for doctors, vets, and the Department of Defense. We have a very expensive QC process that leverages a system of computers and cameras to test and ensure that we are meeting the standards of production. This QC system is relatively new to the company but has been around for about 20 years...

One of the Senior Directors from the Mechanical Engineering team was tasked with setting this system up in March. He was given the keys to the manufacturing kingdom and told that whatever he needed, he only had to ask. Since that day we he has caused massive issues with the network.

The first disaster was when he created broadcast storms with his "networks" and fought us when we suggested that we get him onto a VLAN, assign a SysAdmin to help him, and get his equipment onto a tree in our forest (domain) for management sake. He laughed at us and told us that we didn't understand how networks are managed and then started spreading rumors that we were in competent. Weekly, The Engineer would report that our DHCP systems were interfering with his machines... even after we told him that the DHCP was passive... he still pushed to remove all DHCP servers from "his environments."

Day after day, and week after week, we fought his errors and tried to convince him that we wanted the same goal and a successful resolution. He continued to be "weasel like" in his approach, refusing help, telling us that he knew IT better than we do (150 years of IT experience on my team of 8 guys), and basically causing massive issues inside our infrastructure. It is so bad that even the vendor refuses to support the equipment because nothing is configured as directed.

Last week, we all got pulled into a meeting with the VP and asked why the project wasn't done. The Engineer gets mean and demands that it is IT dept fault and that we don't know what we are doing. We shoot back that we can't support systems that we aren't allowed to see. The Engineer then says that his systems are working just fine and that if we do anything "special" on them, it will be up to use to support them when there is a failure.

I jump to speak and point out that he has 5 Windows workstations set to 5 different named workgroups, on 4 different IP schemas (including the APIPA 169.254.0.0/16) an one of them isn't even plugged into the network. He responses that they all talk and share folders just fine. The VP agrees to support this nightmare of a disaster and The Engineer then says that the "special" configurations better not cause a single minute of outage because IT is known for having outages due to "stupid lack of understanding."

The VP thanks the Engineer for his time and ends the meeting, and then spends the next 30 minutes chewing me out for not being a team player.

FML

I work at an AI startup. We have been around for a while and have built a product that uses LLMs at its core.

We have a new CEO. They were clearly attracted to the industry because of the hype around AI. They are pleasant and seem to be good at their job in the traditional sense.

To the problem - The communication about AI is where things fall short. The CEO's faith in AI means that everything, according to them, should be solved with AI. We need more resources - "I believe we can do more with AI." We should scale up - "with the help of AI." We need to build an app - "With AI, we can probably do it in a week." Release in more markets - "Translate everything with AI." Every meeting we have, they talk at length about how great AI is.

It feels like there's a loss of faith in ideas, technical development, and product work (where AI tools could potentially be used). Instead, the constant assumption is that AI will solve everything… I interpret this as a fundamental lack of understanding of what AI is. It's just a diluted concept that attracts venture capital. If negativity is sensed in response to an inquiry about something technical the CEO just stare into the air and answers something with AI again.

I'm going completely crazy over this. AI is some kind of standard answer to all problems. Does anyone else experience this? How could one tackle this?

(In Godot)

Working on a project where I need to keep efficiency in mind; have a list of unique strings so I figured I'd write up a quick test to see which is quicker; Array, PackedStringArray, or Dictionary.

I added 10,000 integers as a String to each storage object, with Dictionary values just being null.

I then iterated each calling .has(string) for each of the 10,000 strings. The results were exponentially in the favor of Dictionary

Dictionary: 6ms
PackedStringArray: 537ms
Array[String]: 948ms

Do keep in mind, I only tested the .has function as for my use case that'll be called very often. You do also lose the ordering of Arrays of course, however again not needed for me.

The (crappy) code for this test is below

func _ready() -> void:
	var packed_array: PackedStringArray = PackedStringArray()
	var array: Array[String] = []
	var dictionary: Dictionary = {}
	for i in 10000:
		packed_array.append(str(i))
		array.append(str(i))
		dictionary[str(i)] = null
	
	var start_time: int = Time.get_ticks_msec()
	for i in 10000:
		dictionary.has(str(i))
	
	var stop_time: int = Time.get_ticks_msec()
	print("Dictionary: " + str(stop_time - start_time)+"ms")
	
	var start_time2: int = Time.get_ticks_msec()
	for i in 10000:
		packed_array.has(str(i))
	
	var stop_time2: int = Time.get_ticks_msec()
	print("PackedStringArray: " + str(stop_time2 - start_time2)+"ms")
	
	var start_time3: int = Time.get_ticks_msec()
	for i in 10000:
		array.has(str(i))
	
	var stop_time3: int = Time.get_ticks_msec()
	print("Array[String]: " + str(stop_time3 - start_time3)+"ms")

Edit: I get it, a lot of people know this, I shared it for those who don't/didn't (like myself as I had completely forgotten about the big O notation which I last read up on many years ago).

Thank you to all of the big O notation experts

Hey friends,

I am on this subreddit often, and I see so many posts about "tutorial hell" and not feeling like you know programming, even after days/weeks/months of learning. I want to share how I got out of "tutorial hell" when I was "teaching myself" programming (doing online courses and the like). It changed my life!

For context, I started in tutorial hell years ago until I built some of my own projects. One of those projects got me a first job. I've now been in industry for 8 years, front and back end, new and old projects, multiple languages and frameworks, and have been on and lead engineering teams of up to 20 people.

First, tutorials are good, and you did the right thing by starting with them. With tutorials, you can learn some skills, but most importantly, you learn what is possible.

After you get a few tutorials under your belt, the best thing you can do to build confidence is to set up your own challenge. The next step is literally just to go in without a guide. Make up a project that you want to do, or see one in the wild that you want to copy (but which does not have a guide for it). This is going to teach you:

• How to figure out where to start

• How to find answers to problems when there isn't a guide

• How to CREATE rather than COPY

Most of any engineer/data scientist/programmer's job is going to be applying some skills/process to a problem that has not yet been solved. There is probably similar work that has been done, but not to achieve the result that you want. This is the essential step to take past tutorial hell.

I'm posting this because so many of the "tutorial hell" posts basically ask which tutorial to do next. It may seem simple, but the answer is to challenge yourself to move on without a tutorial.

Here are steps:

1. Find a project you're interested in - make it as simple or complex as you'd like

2. Write out what you're going to do

3. Start the project (pick a framework, whatever, just get the boilerplate down)

4. Make your first change

5. Keep making the next change until it starts looking like what you want it to be

If this post connects with literally 1 person, I'll consider it worth my time to write. My first real "on my own" project was a project management web app (front/back end) using bootstrap styles, AngularJS, and a Node.js backend. It was nothing revolutionary, and I didn't have the capabilities to do it until after it was done. Just start :)