Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#71

Post by phugoid » Mon, Apr 13, 2009, 3:08 PM UTC

nomoresecrets wrote: post #70

phugoid wrote: post #39

Well, I nearly killed myself with a line of bad code. I made a silly change to a flight simulator's "unusual attitude" logic. Unusual attitude training consists of putting the aircraft in a very difficult orientation (45 deg nose down, 60 deg left bank, etc.) and training pilots to recover. Here's what the simulators look like: http://blafsen.net/photos/simulator.jpg I changed the code, and brought the simulator up o…

Ha, cool, I used to work at Rediffusion and I heard a similar story about when a UPS pilot got the SC to do the phugoid behaviour 'properly' by taking him up in a plane to experience it. When they tried it in the sim, both of them were similarly thrown around and a terrified few seconds as neither were able to reach the panic button :-)

Any chance you worked on an MD-82 for Alitalia a long time ago? I think they have two over there, and I worked on relocating one of them to CAE Madrid. My first taste of a Rediffusion machine - similar architecture, nicer code.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#72

Post by hellweaver666 » Mon, Apr 13, 2009, 5:03 PM UTC

My current job - I sit next to the marketing manager who spends his day either talking loudly on the phone in German or asking me stupid marketing questions that have no relevance to my job because he can't be bothered to walk across the office and ask the right person.

In addition, behind me is the CEO's office. The wall is glass and everytime I open my web browser to do some research he comes and asks what I'm doing - as far as he's concerned I should be doing nothing but writing code.

Also, to my left is a door to the office balcony where the smokers do their thing, so every five minutes during winter I get an icey blast and the stench of tobbaco when they open the door to go out and again when they come back in.

Finally, directly above my desk is an AC chiller unit that blows cold air down my back from spring to autumn making my hands so cold I can barely type.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#73

Post by wlievens » Tue, Apr 14, 2009, 11:20 AM UTC

trapper wrote: post #3

Not working conditions per se, but debugging a legacy bioinformatics program written in perl. Comments were in french which I do not understand. It took three days to run and exited with: "Error - good luck finding the bug".

I've heard stories before specifically about the bioinformatics academic circles... biotech researchers who think writing code is trivial so they never even bother to have a software engineer look at it, until it's too late.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#74

Post by trapper » Wed, Apr 15, 2009, 9:10 AM UTC

wlievens wrote: post #73

trapper wrote: post #3

Not working conditions per se, but debugging a legacy bioinformatics program written in perl. Comments were in french which I do not understand. It took three days to run and exited with: "Error - good luck finding the bug".

I've heard stories before specifically about the bioinformatics academic circles... biotech researchers who think writing code is trivial so they never even bother to have a software engineer look at it, until it's too late.

It's true. And for some reason they all love perl.

Re: Ask HN: Worst working conditions you have written code in?

#75

Post by nomoresecrets » Fri, Apr 17, 2009, 10:28 PM UTC

phugoid wrote: post #71

nomoresecrets wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, cool, I used to work at Rediffusion and I heard a similar story about when a UPS pilot got the SC to do the phugoid behaviour 'properly' by taking him up in a plane to experience it. When they tried it in the sim, both of them were similarly thrown around and a terrified few seconds as neither were able to reach the panic button :-)

Any chance you worked on an MD-82 for Alitalia a long time ago? I think they have two over there, and I worked on relocating one of them to CAE Madrid. My first taste of a Rediffusion machine - similar architecture, nicer code.

No, think there was an Alitalia on the factory floor when I worked there, but I can't remember.

Most memorable event on the factory floor was when a hydraulic jack failed on a sim, and the resulting jet of fluid punched a hole through six layers of hand wire-wrapped PCBs on the sim next door.

I think it put them back six weeks. Luckily the penalty clause for lateness was only $50,000 per day. Gulp.