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Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

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Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#381

Post by Doxin »

monocasa wrote: post #290
isatty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do robotics, I can tell you that the fact that it was the cheapest or the most hacky does not matter in the least. Everything can and will go wrong, even the priciest and well documented part. I used to have multiple clamps around the controller, message bus, the firmware and also a physical barrier, and yet would not feel safe with my fingers or person around moving parts.

Used to work in robotics. The QA folk were obviously very much sticklers for the full process of enabling the hardware interlocks before getting near the moving bits. One time a manager got mad at them for taking so long going through the full interlock process while repeating a failure mode. He therefore went up to the machine saying "look, it failed so it's stopped, that's how the code works!" At that point our bet…

I don't work in robotics so I might be entirely off-base here, but surely the interlock process would consist of hitting an E-stop somewhere? What was this process that took long enough for said manager to get annoyed with?

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#382

Post by Dylan16807 »

theli0nheart wrote: post #112

> Look at an audio file's waveform before playing it at max volume. This is important, but more broadly, practice good sound hygiene: wear headphones them around your neck until you know for a fact that it's safe to put them on your ears. Additionally, never play "new" sounds without remembering to set audio output to a tiny fraction of normal and increasing it after the sample is deemed safe. Musicians have this dri…

Why is your normal volume so loud?

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#383

Post by zerocrates »

myself248 wrote: post #368
cafard wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shirt-tail relative worked on a metal press in the one-button days. It cost him part of a finger or two.

> A shirt-tail relative What does this mean?

It's another way of saying a distant relative.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#384

Post by andi999 »

Gravityloss wrote: post #149
isatty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do robotics, I can tell you that the fact that it was the cheapest or the most hacky does not matter in the least. Everything can and will go wrong, even the priciest and well documented part. I used to have multiple clamps around the controller, message bus, the firmware and also a physical barrier, and yet would not feel safe with my fingers or person around moving parts.

Some small metal pressing machines for example have two buttons, one on each side of the machine. You have to push them both for the machine to operate. This means your hands can't be squished. Or a dental x-ray machine has the final "run" button in the hallway so the nurse taking x-rays must go there to do it, so they don't get repeated exposure.

I know a guy who taped on of the buttons to work faster for the bonus.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#385

Post by Doxin »

12ian34 wrote: post #173
ehnto wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tinnitus. You don't want tinnitus. Silence is no longer a possibility for me. I got it messing about on computers and with loud cars in my teens, so unfortunately it was just a dumb kid thing that will last a lifetime. I hate to guess how many kids are giving themselves tinnitus right now. It's just not possible to communicate the seriousness of long term problems to kids, they have no context for what long te…

Sorry to hear that, but I appreciate your words of warning. I go to loud clubs / live music a lot (pre covid) and despite knowing I should probably wear earplugs, I don't. Perhaps club revival post-lockdown is the time for me to begin.

Totally worth getting some nice-ish earplugs IMO. Even just getting a $30 set is such a wild improvement, comfort-wise, over those horrid foam earplugs you see a lot of people use.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#386

Post by hyperhopper »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #89
8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are sometimes kind of down on that approach in software, considering it sloppy. Especially in comparison to other engineering disciplines it just looks kinda bad sure. But really I'm pretty sure if for example civil engineers could build a bridge in an hour and load it up consequence-free they'd do it too. The fact that we do it isn't bad at all, but yeah it's easy to not realize when you've exited the realm o…

I wonder how long it will be before we can 3-D print a dam in place.

I mean, the novel of 3d printing is that it's just additive construction, don't we already build dams and almost all other structures that way already?

A crane is just a bigger print arm :)

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#387

Post by Aeolun »

Doxin wrote: post #381
monocasa wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to work in robotics. The QA folk were obviously very much sticklers for the full process of enabling the hardware interlocks before getting near the moving bits. One time a manager got mad at them for taking so long going through the full interlock process while repeating a failure mode. He therefore went up to the machine saying "look, it failed so it's stopped, that's how the code works!" At that point our bet…

I don't work in robotics so I might be entirely off-base here, but surely the interlock process would consist of hitting an E-stop somewhere? What was this process that took long enough for said manager to get annoyed with?

I assume you still need it to move, not be entirely turned off?

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#388

Post by sneak »

OJFord wrote: post #283
sneak wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: Swingline never made a red stapler, the one in Office Space was a prop produced for the film by the production crew. Office Space popularized it to the point where Swingline actually started producing red staplers after the release of the film to capitalize on the demand.

But.. I was told..

Just pass.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#389

Post by xondono »

MauranKilom wrote: post #127
robotresearcher wrote: post #73

In the 90s I implemented a PWM motor controller in asm, for a robot with enough power to accelerate hard on soft grass, outside. Robot was rather over engineered by a team mate who previously worked on automated farm machinery. Tested the microcontroller on the breadboard with an oscilloscope, all looked well: nice PWM shapes. For the first integrated test on the robot, I high-centered it on some bricks so the wheels…

Ouch. I'm curious what would cause the PWM output to invert under such condition? Was there a special case built in for <2% that was coded incorrectly, or did it emerge from something else?

PWM periods and on-time are implemented in the time domain in hardware, so my guess would be issues with integer algebra.

Some hardware implementations are notoriously weird on edge cases. Some manufacturers built PWM modules so 0 setting on the on-time register means “no signal”, while for others it means “minimal on-time” (no signal is achieved by turning off the module).

The other bad handled case is when going above period (if period is set at 210 clocks but on time is set to 250). Some implementations wrap around, some get locked in “always on”.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#390

Post by kanzenryu2 »

AlexC04 wrote: post #82

I wrote a layoff database for Nortel Networks from ~1998 to 2001. The way I got my notice of termination was while I was running some tests on the production database and needed a "negative" so I searched for a userid that was not present in the database: my own. When I saw my name in the list I called my manager and asked him what was going on. He said "Alex, why don't you head on home for the day and I'll call you…

One of the only bankruptcies in history to make a profit!

I worked for the Australian subsidiary in the 90s when they had "Vision 2000" of becoming the world's third largest telco by 2000.

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