61–70 of 106 posts
Many of the issues could potentially be solved by modern LLMs? Reading, analyzing and assembling documentation could be probably done by LLMs. And by including old code and snippets into the training set, the LLM could be fairly proficient in writing this code probably too? Maybe someone knows more about the use/not-use of LLMs in this context?
Well, the Voyagers will still be there, there will be just no way to contact them anymore once the power runs out or communication is lost (whichever happens first)...
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I am no longer a junior, but would have been upset to be tasked with refreshing the old historical obsolete laundry (no matter how sacred or distinguished), expecially when I already had experience delivering safety critical products packing much more modern technologies. The opportunity they would be offering is not rare at all! The opportunity to research and design something truly new on the other way is very scar…
Is that because juniors want to leave their name on something? I ask honestly since I shared a lot of the same sentiment as you, and never quite got an understanding as to why working on the cool new thing was "more fun" even if a lot of the projects under-the-hood were recycled.
> We’re programmers.
> Programmers are, in their hearts, architects, and the first thing they want to do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place flat and build something grand.
> We’re not excited by incremental renovation: tinkering, improving, planting flower beds.
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> Kids these days... Why would someone in their right mind think working on the Voyager project could damage their careers? It's an isolated legacy-project with no future. Mostly everything you learn for it will be only useful for this specific project, so all time to invest there is time to can't invest into something useful. Sure, there are probably some parts to learn from this too, but It's less than what your co…
Understanding assembly language (any architecture) give insights into how computers work that are still valuable and relevant today. Almost nobody still writes code in assembly, but understanding it at least conceptually is still worth something. If I were hiring, I would almost always prefer a candidate who had some experience at machine/assembly programming to one that didn't, all else being roughly equal.
There hasn't been a single time in 20 years that it was actually relevant for real work in any way.
Unless you are doing very specific work knowing assembly is about as useful as knowing COBOL (which is also useful for a very specific kind of work that most devs will never do)
> younger engineers often have the capability but not the inclination Kids these days... Why would someone in their right mind think working on the Voyager project could damage their careers? You can work on new and fancy tools all you want to improve supporting tools, and it's still one of the coolest space missions active. Plus, it has a real end - at some point, support will be further reduced and the person will…
> Kids these days... Why would someone in their right mind think working on the Voyager project could damage their careers? It's an isolated legacy-project with no future. Mostly everything you learn for it will be only useful for this specific project, so all time to invest there is time to can't invest into something useful. Sure, there are probably some parts to learn from this too, but It's less than what your co…
This is just so blatantly ignorant. As if you believe there's some other space agency taking scientific measurements out past the heliopause.
I've audited codebases in languages that I haven't programmed in. It is a matter of grasping a few basic concepts, like branch execution, branch destination, where data is stored, how it is communicated. Don Lancaster told us how to do this: https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/enhance_vI.pdf.
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I don't think you want LLMs touching projects that cost over $800.000.000, even to assemble "documentation" (since the LLM can't really document in as much it's translating what it's reading, because documentation includes much more information than what's stored in the code itself). It's a cool idea, though, I'd like to see this done as an experiment :)
Anthropic / Google / Meta / Airbus / Boeing / ASML EUV machines, etc, etc... are all developed using LLMs and they are much more expensive than this
Though I agree with the expensive factor. Perhaps, what I actually believe is that LLMs shouldn't touch code that's as mission critical as what NASA works on, even though it might be great to develop user-facing frontend software and CRUD backend code for huge corporations and projects.
I highly recommend watching "Its Quieter in the Twilight" ( https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9rrxr ) a cool documentary about the engineers still running voyager (a lot of them have been on it for decades)
Video isn't there... but I found it on YT. https://youtu.be/RIP1p5gAoak?si=ftTEGYFJscXJPaJm
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There are a whole lot of people in this thread who would rather tell their grandkids that they worked on web apps and sold ads.
It's a tragedy some of our best minds are dedicated to that, and digital surveillance so their corporate masters can sell better targeted ads with a higher click-thru rate.