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Never trust a system that seems to be working

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Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#71

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #54
pjc50 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "saying the name of the game uncensored is going to get namesearchers and I have a transflag in my name so guess what kind of response I'd immediately get?" I believe kovarex made some anti-trans statements once, and gamers in general are prone to making abuse pile-ons, so it's a mitigation against that.

> I believe kovarex made some anti-trans statements once Nah, publicly advertised for and defended some right-wing Youtuber. [0] [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/factorio

[deleted]

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#72

Post by adrian_b »

mschuster91 wrote: post #52
crgwbr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. That makes sense, but what’s the reason for using current instead of voltage as the variable?

Current flow is independent of wire length, the sender only has to turn up the voltage high enough to overcome the wire resistance.

This happens because the real insulators are better approximations of ideal insulators, than real conductors are approximations of ideal conductors.

In electrical circuits made with normal conductors and insulators, e.g. copper wires and organic polymer insulators, it is possible to ignore the currents that branch from the wires and close through the insulators, because they are extremely small (e.g. in the femtoampere range), but frequently it is not possible to ignore the voltage drops along the copper wires, which are caused by the resistances of the wires, and which may be in the millivolt range.

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#73

Post by bee_rider »

csours wrote: post #35

If your code has side effects, it only ever seems to be working. ---- > the newbie says "aww, why isn't it working?" > the intermediate says "yay, it's working!" > the expert goes "hmm, why is it working?" I've also seen this as My thing isn't working and I change X and now I get error J instead of error K, so now I have to change X back because it's still not working. Where K is a "better" error than J, such as K =…

Working with beginning programming students, "Yay, now we have an error message that makes sense" has become my catchphrase.

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#74

Post by joshstrange »

While I have not really played SE (past initial launch, it was too daunting to build the ship in space, etc) I have run into these kind of "issues" in Factorio. While they can have disastrous effects, I often really enjoy finding the core problem and finding a solution to make it "fail-safe".

Sometimes I wish I could go back and wipe all my Factorio knowledge and start from scratch again, most importantly refusing to use blueprints from the internet except for basic things like balancers. Finding early/mid/late game malls/blueprints sort of ruined the game for me. Min/maxing is fine by myself but once I'm "competing" against the internet or feel obligated to find the most efficient/best green/red/blue circuit factory, or science packs, etc it really ruins the game for me and makes it feel more like a job.

I got a good thousand or two hours out of the game before I hit that point and someday I want to try playing it again with self-enforced limits on what I'm "allowed" to get from the internet and what I need to just figure out on my own. The first game I played was pure bliss (and I played with Bob's mods and a number of others, yes that was stupid for my first playthrough but damn it was fun), I'd love to recapture that.

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#76

Post by taink »

mschuster91 wrote: post #54
pjc50 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "saying the name of the game uncensored is going to get namesearchers and I have a transflag in my name so guess what kind of response I'd immediately get?" I believe kovarex made some anti-trans statements once, and gamers in general are prone to making abuse pile-ons, so it's a mitigation against that.

> I believe kovarex made some anti-trans statements once Nah, publicly advertised for and defended some right-wing Youtuber. [0] [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/factorio

Uncle Bob? Stating he is just "some right-wing youtuber" sounds mildly reductive, the guy co-authored the agile manifesto[0].

I won't go as far as defending his views, but recommending his talks and books seems pretty normal to me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#77

Post by dysoco »

elteto wrote: post #31

Wow, Factorio is approaching Full Time Job levels of detail and work required to keep everything running. Incredible game that I will never play, I feel I’m back at my job!

Usually games or hobbies that feel like a job are much more fun because there's nothing wrong happening if you fail at it, or if one day you decide not to show up.

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#78

Post by rcxdude »

Kiro wrote: post #49
elteto wrote: post #31

Wow, Factorio is approaching Full Time Job levels of detail and work required to keep everything running. Incredible game that I will never play, I feel I’m back at my job!

This is a mod that seems extremely boring and tedious. The base game is not like this.

Space exploration is a mod which has extra automation challenges compared to the base game, and it's probably got some of the most interesting ones compared to other mods which tend to just have the same basic concepts as the base game, just with many more steps piled on, which are probably more on the tedious side (pyanodons mods being the most infamous in this regard).

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#79

Post by csours »

bee_rider wrote: post #73
csours wrote: post #35

If your code has side effects, it only ever seems to be working. ---- > the newbie says "aww, why isn't it working?" > the intermediate says "yay, it's working!" > the expert goes "hmm, why is it working?" I've also seen this as My thing isn't working and I change X and now I get error J instead of error K, so now I have to change X back because it's still not working. Where K is a "better" error than J, such as K =…

Working with beginning programming students, "Yay, now we have an error message that makes sense" has become my catchphrase.

"Read the error message, no wait don't close that go back" when helping people is a definite feeling.

Take a deep breath. Take off your headset. Go outside. Never look at a computer again. Start driving a bulldozer. Life is good.

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#80

Post by phkahler »

janpot wrote: post #57
electroly wrote: post #43

This is why 4-20 mA is a common signaling standard in industrial automation. 4 mA means zero and 20 mA means one. 0 mA means broken transmitter !

or why we build a stop command with normal-closed contacts. a broken wire results in the same signal as a "stop" command.

Semantics are really important in these situations. We have a system with an E-stop (emergency stop) circuit. Any break in the loop and the system will shut off. It needed to work together with one particular vendors board that insisted on having a "hardware enable" signal that it could control. Rather than adding an additional circuit, someone decided to have "hardware enable" flip a normally open relay in the E-stop circuit. Technically this "works" because enable clears the E-stop condition and allows the thing to function. From a practical point of view this has caused no end of odd problems, particularly when diagnosing issues where things fail because the meaning of this signal has been compromised.
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