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What *is* code? (2015)

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Re: What *is* code? (2015)

#51

Post by olowe »

wavemode wrote: post #23
bossyTeacher wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>some Linux nerds found me working as a receptionist answering phones and scanning paper records in at a failing medical practice. They got me doing desktop Windows and Linux server support. I’m an official software engineer now There is a gap between receptionist and official software engineer. Please, give us more details about your journey and what happened in between

> There is a gap between receptionist and official software engineer. At many companies (especially old, stodgy companies) this gap is artificial. The day you get asked "hey, I've got some data .... and I need ..." and you successfully solve the person's problem, is the day you become the office's live-in software engineer. That person you helped will be back, and they will bring friends. The rest after that is just…

That's pretty much how it happened. A neighbour bought a medical practice from two retiring doctors in their 80s. One had officially diagnosed vascular dementia but was still practicing. The place was losing money because they couldn't reliably bill appointments. Nobody really knew how to use computers except for that neighbour who was himself busy seeing patients. That neighbour knew I was interested in "computers" because I picked up some old desktop he put out on the side of the road for rubbish collection, and asked if I was up for scanning papers in for hourly cash. "Ummm, sure". I never knew I could really make money using computers.

Every couple of days "the server" would crash. It was an old dusty Windows box under one of the admin staff's desk. I offered to move it out so they wouldn't keep accidentally kicking out the power cable or disturb the wobbly ethernet switch making it fall down off the top of it down into the corner where the mice and moths hid. I was sick of crawling down there after a while.

Once staff saw that I knew how to plug network cables back in after moving IT gear, they stopped calling in the IT company meant to be keeping all this stuff on life support. From there you hear about every tiny little problem, you get busier, learn to automate bits of your job piece by piece to keep up with the demands.

For example, a doctor complained about waiting for me to scan in pathology reports delivered by snail mail. The fax machine kept running out of toner & paper as it was also the practice's main printer. I researched and found that the pathology providers could install some software on a Windows machine which would deliver reports directly into the medical software the doctors were starting to use. That software would crash, too. How can I monitor that Windows service and have it send me an email if it goes down? What if I could get it to try to start it back up again before it sent me an email?

Eventually the dementia doctor retired as he kept falling asleep during appointments.

The other old doctor voluntarily quit when the filing cabinets containing all the paper records moved to a locked room with just a scanner and shredder.

A doctor wanted to be able to connect to the practice remotely. I learned about VPNs, but I had no idea if I could set that up using the modem/router provided by the ISP. Some family friend referred me to the IT company who took care of their email. Turned out that company were real Linux purists running all their own mail system in a datacenter. They were impressed by my proposed network diagram for the medical practice. They thought it was cool that I installed Linux on old PCs to keep using them for fun.

Instead of me hiring them for support, they just offered me a real salary job at a bit over minimum wage.

Re: What *is* code? (2015)

#52

Post by olowe »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #28
wavemode wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a gap between receptionist and official software engineer. At many companies (especially old, stodgy companies) this gap is artificial. The day you get asked "hey, I've got some data .... and I need ..." and you successfully solve the person's problem, is the day you become the office's live-in software engineer. That person you helped will be back, and they will bring friends. The rest after that is just…

Not sure what country you live in, but where I live, a receptionist doesn't have access to any data processing tools that are not within the realm of a receptionist, and therefore this mobility does not happen. The receptionist ends up redirect the query to someone who has access to the relevant systems. What sort of companies are those were receptionists have access to tools beyond their role? and why are people app…

> What sort of companies are those were receptionists have access to tools beyond their role? and why are people approaching the receptionists asking for data queries?

It's a fair question. I questioned myself all the time doing the job. The couple of competent doctors couldn't see other patients as the doctors couldn't get paper records themselves. The old retiring doctors (one had a genuine diagnosis of vascular dementia) sometimes hid the paper records for themselves. Admin staff stopped bothering sorting the records properly some years back too. You needed to just know where some group of patient's records were in which cabinet. The workflow for accessing records, in the morning:

    1. study the appointment book
    2. open delivered snail mail, set aside ones for patients who had appointments that day
    3. get each patient's records, attach any new mail (real attachments with paperclips!)
    4. place them on each doctor's desks
By scanning the records in other doctors, competent ones, could see other patients. For me, I was ok with doing this job even though it is officially inappropriate.

Despite this strict paper workflow, there were 3 PCs on the front desk to be used by any admin staff at any time. No password to log in ("too slow" otherwise). The password to log in to the medical software was "1234" ("too slow" otherwise... again). The practice purchased computers only to be able to bill patients using credit/debit cards and to get rebates more quickly from the government.

> ... permissions to run arbitrary software without permission from the IT team

There was no IT team. The practice called an IT support company who billed per 10 minutes - no contracts - if the "server" didn't come back up again after a disk failed or somebody kicked the cables. The practice staff stopped calling the IT team once they saw that I could do the job myself (see my longer comment)

Re: What *is* code? (2015)

#54

Post by vivzkestrel »

- What is code?

- Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me, no more

- No, I don't know why you're not there I pushed to Main,

- but you don't care Is it the bracket? Or is it the path? Math.random() wrath! Give me a sign!

- I want no other, no other framework This is our Sprint, our time When we’re together, I need you forever Is it... Clean Code?

- Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me no more

- Oh, baby, don't crash me Don't crash me, no more What is code?

- I'll see myself out

Re: What *is* code? (2015)

#55

Post by stevenhuang »

hnfong wrote: post #50
stevenhuang wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a similar article I read on this in regards to intelligence and LLMs that says simulated intelligence _is_ intelligence.

Interesting. Do you have the link? I'm kinda interested in the subject (see eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247266 )

I couldn't find it, I'm starting to think it might have been a hn comment thread.

At the time I read this article but I don't completely agree with some of the points. For one it's too certain for some things and also seems AI generated, but it was somewhat interesting

Yes I do remember reading and agreeing much with your comments on this topic!

https://medium.com/@MarxismLeninism/the-idealist-retreat-a-c...

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