That anecdote actually happened and I later ended up writing software for NASA (and the space shuttle). It paid a lot. Better than playing most games, at least as far as I know. Plus it looks good on a resume. I haven't played any games since high school.
Videogames always bored me because they weren't complex enough. I bought my first computer to play video games, but had more fun dissecting the computer, learning the silicon and programming my own simulations.
IOW, writing a software to accurately model the space shuttle was more fun than flying a space shuttle game.
I used to write software for particle physical analysis (OK, nuclear physics, but the same thing). At was some lf the easiest sl\software that I wrote. Very straight forward and well defined. The math was involved, but I don't consider that programming because it had to deal with the physics and not the realization of the algorithms.
I'd say writing embedded software to deal with buggy hardware is far more complex and challenging because you can no longer rely on the computer doing what you instructed it to do.
I was a math major. What did you use a calculator for? I just remember doing a lot of proofs all day and I was in applied math at that. Anyhing with numbers like a 3x3 determinant was solvable in your head with a little practice, but usually it was all symbolic.
The most insightful comment in this thread. I worked as a professional physicist and engineer for a few decades and never needed anything more than a basic calculator - or if I did, I used a spreadsheet, matlab or C.
I got a math degree and can honestly say that I never used a calculator a single time. I then got an engineering degree and lived with one, but never needed anything more than +-*/. I did really like RPN on my HP. I bought my first calculator in grade school that I learned to program on. Mostly financial, NPV stuff.
I came seriously close to visiting the site this weekend. I was making plans with some friends but it was such a nice day we wound up going to Rainier at the last minute.
Twenty years ago in Phoenix, an electrical engineer solved a problem with a freeway interchange that the civil engineers said was impossible and was going to cost the city millions of dollars.
From what I've seen, I think it has do with items they have in stock vs 3rd party resellers. And I've seen a lot of 3rd parties charge insane (like >100x price difference). I've also seen less than 10x standard pricing, but the best that I can tell, those are scams.
The algorithm looks at all pices, whether a scam or not, orders them and then lists the item and price.
Depends on what you mean by quality. I grew up in a poor area surrounded by farms and could always get incredibly cheap priced carrots, onions, leafy vegetables. Tomatoes too. Like 4lbs/$ and it was same day fresh, but usually ugly. I was in whole foods in seattle yesterday and prices were more like $4/lb for perfect looking tomatoes. The pretty stuff got sent elsewhere, but you know what, cut the bad parts off, close your eyes and it was fresher than anywhere else. Crap, if you really wanted to, you could go pick the stuff straight out of the field. I never heard of anyone getting in trouble for doing that. Even after the harvest, there was still so much food laying on the ground that many people went out with 50lb burlap bags and picked the leftovers.
Slashdot Mirror
That anecdote actually happened and I later ended up writing software for NASA (and the space shuttle). It paid a lot. Better than playing most games, at least as far as I know. Plus it looks good on a resume. I haven't played any games since high school.
The best that I can tell, google thinks I'm a gay and interested in a sex change. Maybe google knows something about me that I don't.
had to say it
Jobs aren't fun. That's why they're jobs.
IOW, writing a software to accurately model the space shuttle was more fun than flying a space shuttle game.
I'd say writing embedded software to deal with buggy hardware is far more complex and challenging because you can no longer rely on the computer doing what you instructed it to do.
I was a math major. What did you use a calculator for? I just remember doing a lot of proofs all day and I was in applied math at that. Anyhing with numbers like a 3x3 determinant was solvable in your head with a little practice, but usually it was all symbolic.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/in...
Many people here are all for that. Unfortunately they've never lived it.
The number of engineering problems you can solve with a calculator IRL is approximately zero.
It's really sad this was marked as -1. It shows how out of touch a lot of people are.
The most insightful comment in this thread. I worked as a professional physicist and engineer for a few decades and never needed anything more than a basic calculator - or if I did, I used a spreadsheet, matlab or C.
I got a math degree and can honestly say that I never used a calculator a single time. I then got an engineering degree and lived with one, but never needed anything more than +-*/. I did really like RPN on my HP. I bought my first calculator in grade school that I learned to program on. Mostly financial, NPV stuff.
It's not that they didn't care, they didn't know. See Marie Curie for an early example of this.
This is slashdot. People who love science but are mostly ignorant of it.
I came seriously close to visiting the site this weekend. I was making plans with some friends but it was such a nice day we wound up going to Rainier at the last minute.
I read Empire Strikes Back upside down in grade school to see if I could do it. Surprisingly I finished it in a day.
Lawyers have doctorates too. Friend from high school went to Harvard and got a J.D.
Twenty years ago in Phoenix, an electrical engineer solved a problem with a freeway interchange that the civil engineers said was impossible and was going to cost the city millions of dollars.
No really. I have the degrees and pay stubs to prove it. And there is at least one thing, OK, only one thing, currently in space that I worked on.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...
That doesn't answer the question of what I should do with all of my money.
The algorithm looks at all pices, whether a scam or not, orders them and then lists the item and price.
for a total savings of ~$3.45 and one increase of:
has increased from $12.55 to $12.56
Depends on what you mean by quality. I grew up in a poor area surrounded by farms and could always get incredibly cheap priced carrots, onions, leafy vegetables. Tomatoes too. Like 4lbs/$ and it was same day fresh, but usually ugly. I was in whole foods in seattle yesterday and prices were more like $4/lb for perfect looking tomatoes. The pretty stuff got sent elsewhere, but you know what, cut the bad parts off, close your eyes and it was fresher than anywhere else. Crap, if you really wanted to, you could go pick the stuff straight out of the field. I never heard of anyone getting in trouble for doing that. Even after the harvest, there was still so much food laying on the ground that many people went out with 50lb burlap bags and picked the leftovers.