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Saw that Radio Controlled Hobbies thread pop up again and misread it as Radio Controlled Hobos.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Saw that Radio Controlled Hobbies thread pop up again and misread it as Radio Controlled Hobos.

Only when they're out of tin foil.

TurtlePerson2 wrote:

Am I the only one who found my degree to be a good preparation for my job after college? Sure I learned a lot of practical stuff on the job, but the concepts that I learned in school have been incredibly helpful. I will say that what I learned in my master's degree was much more helpful than what I learned in the bachelor's degree.

Recently, I've been interviewing college students for positions where I work and I've been struck by how inadequately most of them are prepared to work in my industry. The people graduating with a bachelor's degree have only a basic idea of the kind of work they will soon be doing. Those graduating with a PhD or a master's degree are in a much better spot. I think the problem comes from the fact that most people in my field have only a single major design project as an undergrad, but that in grad school they do several major design classes. Consequently, the extra year spent on the master's degree greatly increases their practical experience.

I figure only 10-20% of any STEM degree will actually be useful in a job, unless you go back into academia or some other branch of high-level research. The problem is you don't know which 10-20% until you're settling into a career, so you kind of need the broad background in order to have flexibility entering the job market. The main value of my BSc-EE was that it taught me places and strategies for finding resources. I haven't run a single differential equation by hand since floating the 63% I needed to get through the class (the second time, natch).

In other fields it's anyone's guess. The amount of fluff filling the humanities these days is kind of appalling.

Well, there's not much at all I use from my 1985 BA in Economics, seeing as Econ has completely rethought itself at least three times since then. I also never got any networking opportunities out of my fellow collegians. If I were to cite the single most useful skill I obtained in my 4 years, it would be the cooking skills I learned as a short-order cook in the local greasy spoon, where I earned my beer-drinking (among other vices) money.

IME, in software development a Masters or PhD does not seem to correlate that strongly with real-world development skills. The best developers seem to have a natural aptitude for it, regardless of education level.

ludi wrote:

The amount of fluff filling the humanities these days is kind of appalling.

This cannot be overstated.

People complain that the humanities are being de-emphasized, but the "humanities" have no one to blame but themselves.

Properly taught and applied, they require rigorous thinking, steadfast methodology and the ability to perceive things from different angles, often contradictory ones.

Which is precisely the problem: Western Society, particularly in the academy, has already defined the human experience, and very narrowly according to perceived present political needs. Any kind of contrary result, or nuanced approach, is simply anathema (and likely to upset their sinecures, which seems to be only valuable thing they provide anymore, not truth or actually novel insight).

And hence we don't teach the humanities appropriately anymore, or even close.

So, yeah, why bother? The graduates are often embarrassingly ignorant of the subject matter, and they're clearly geared towards overt political activism.

Don't teach them at all then.

JBI wrote:

IME, in software development a Masters or PhD does not seem to correlate that strongly with real-world development skills. The best developers seem to have a natural aptitude for it, regardless of education level.

Same here.

And the best developers very rarely bother with Masters and PhDs, to the point where a PhD is basically a negative sign (for application development, language/framework is a different situation).

Glorious wrote:

JBI wrote:

IME, in software development a Masters or PhD does not seem to correlate that strongly with real-world development skills. The best developers seem to have a natural aptitude for it, regardless of education level.

Same here.

And the best developers very rarely bother with Masters and PhDs, to the point where a PhD is basically a negative sign (for application development, language/framework is a different situation).

At my current job (and prior two as well) I seem to have gotten a reputation for being good at chasing down difficult bugs which have stumped other developers. That's kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think it gives a measure of job security; on the other hand, it means I spend a fair percentage of my time doing deep dives into other people's crappy broken code instead of working on forward-looking new development.

just brew it! wrote:

At my current job (and prior two as well) I seem to have gotten a reputation for being good at chasing down difficult bugs which have stumped other developers. That's kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think it gives a measure of job security; on the other hand, it means I spend a fair percentage of my time doing deep dives into other people's crappy broken code instead of working on forward-looking new development.

That's a curse if I ever heard one.

It's finals week for one of my classes, which had 16 weeks of content smushed into 8 weeks of time. Fortunately it's an online class and the exams are open-book. Not sure what the point is once you get to that, though.

I agree with a lot of what has been said thus far.

Like most of you, I have a BS in a hard science (Physics) and I haven't done an infinite series or differential equation or found the specific heat of anything at work since I've been done with college. That's fine with me (more than fine tbh), but my degree definitely taught me a lot of good problem solving skills, and to use every little bit of info I get to find a solution even when it doesn't look remotely relevant.

I kinda wallowed through my second and third years in school and took a lot of random classes in CLAS so I actually feel like I got a fair amount of variety in my college education. Hell, I took creative writing and even a poetry class? I also took a semester of Spanish and a couple of Italian because that stuff just interests me. (also I had to have a couple classes of foreign language for BS-Physics).

I dunno. I think a lot of what you get out of college REALLY depends on you. I have friends, like people I knew before college, that have degrees and even some MS/MA/MFA that are just completely clueless when it comes to real stuff. You can get a piece of paper if you just do the work on the paper/computer and turn it in. If you want to really learn something you need to commit to actually diving in and exploring. I don't blame colleges so much as high schools and the kids themselves. You gotta want to learn diverse topics.

Being an IE, I took everything from Diff'Eq to Physics to Thermo to Statics to Programming to Financial Accounting to Statistics. That'd breadth of knowledge has definitely helped me out working in manufacturing, because I may not remember the math on how to figure stuff out, but I can hold intelligent conversations about generally how things work and how to accomplish tasks.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

Being an IE, I took everything from Diff'Eq to Physics to Thermo to Statics to Programming to Financial Accounting to Statistics. That'd breadth of knowledge has definitely helped me out working in manufacturing, because I may not remember the math on how to figure stuff out, but I can hold intelligent conversations about generally how things work and how to accomplish tasks.

Industrial?

Finally installed a high endurance sd card that's twice the size of my old one in my dash cam. Hoping it won't surprise me with any failures. I also have a button to turn it off at night. I tried just unplugging it but I have some issue with fumbling around open high current sockets frequently.

I'll second DancinJack and say that you really have to want it. A heavy dose of natural curiosity certainly doesn't hurt either. Some of the best developers I know can get waylaid and sent off on some ridiculous tangent quite easily just because they're so interested in how things work. Someone who's comfortable and well versed in mathematics, but doesn't have that drive probably isn't going to go very far.

DancinJack wrote:

You can get a piece of paper if you just do the work on the paper/computer and turn it in.

This is why I question degrees at all. If all it really demonstrates is that you turned in work, what value is that? I guess when you have no experience it's all you've got.

My direct manager thinks I need to keep going and get a 4-year degree. His equivalent on another project, who I work with a lot, told me don't bother because I have enough experience.

Thing is I work with schools, so people in that industry value the piece of paper since they all have one.

derFunkenstein wrote:

DancinJack wrote:

You can get a piece of paper if you just do the work on the paper/computer and turn it in.

This is why I question degrees at all. If all it really demonstrates is that you turned in work, what value is that? I guess when you have no experience it's all you've got.

My direct manager thinks I need to keep going and get a 4-year degree. His equivalent on another project, who I work with a lot, told me don't bother because I have enough experience.

Thing is I work with schools, so people in that industry value the piece of paper since they all have one.

They "value" it in most industries. As in, they make sure you have it before they even look at your resume in a lot of cases. It's such BS, but there aren't a ton of good ways to narrow down the crowd. Imagine how many applications some companies get for each job. There are plenty of cases when someone without a degree is likely better educated (read: better suited for that particular position) than someone with a degree, but I don't think I'd be wrong saying it's the exception and not the rule.

There just needs to be a better way to hire people. And using parsing systems to find keywords in your resume is not it. I don't really have a solution beyond doing the incredibly time consuming and hard work of actually talking to people, but that's just not viable for a lot of businesses.

Well, whatever value it is, I hope to early next year start to see what's out there. I told my boss that I came back from Indy feeling like I'm more competent that I've previously given myself credit for. I'll be interested to know if anybody else sees me that way. Could be a big blow to my ego.

Just keep in mind that it is in your employer's interest to make you think your skills are less valuable than they are! (And that a majority of the other people working in your field are probably marginally competent at best.)

Of all the weird things Javascript was never intended to do I think Promise objects are probably the weirdest of the bunch.

just brew it! wrote:

Just keep in mind that it is in your employer's interest to make you think your skills are less valuable than they are! (And that a majority of the other people working in your field are probably marginally competent at best.)

Yes, it's in their best interests because otherwise I become expensive.

I haven't seriously job hunted in like a decade. I went right from my previous job into this one. After I was there for a year, I had a couple interviews because I didn't want to do application support for the rest of my life. I wasn't really cut out for those jobs so I quit looking. There have been a lot of twists and turns since then, though.

1.1GB encoded in 11 minutes and change. Extending that to a total data set of several terabytes means the entire job will not take days, but months.

There's a lot of room for error there, but yeah... that's a big job.

Redocbew wrote:

1.1GB encoded in 11 minutes and change. Extending that to a total data set of several terabytes means the entire job will not take days, but months.

There's a lot of room for error there, but yeah... that's a big job.

If you're allowed to say, what are you encoding, and how?

What I thought was just worse-than-usual fall allergies seems to be a head cold. Working from home today, and probably taking a nap at lunchtime.

just brew it! wrote:

What I thought was just worse-than-usual fall allergies seems to be a head cold. Working from home today, and probably taking a nap at lunchtime.

I've been clearing mucus for a couple weeks. Getting better but it's still annoying.

just brew it! wrote:

Redocbew wrote:

1.1GB encoded in 11 minutes and change. Extending that to a total data set of several terabytes means the entire job will not take days, but months.

There's a lot of room for error there, but yeah... that's a big job.

If you're allowed to say, what are you encoding, and how?

I'm using the Elastic Transcoder in AWS to encode a bunch of FLAC files for HLS. I've done video for HLS before, but this is the first time I've done HLS for audio only. The project isn't so much about the encoding, but how to use ETS and a few other AWS widgets to automate the process.

I appear to have invented the Baby-Saber:

You are my new favorite person on the Internet.

Perfect for stirring a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Captain Ned wrote:

Perfect for stirring a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Blade end is sealed watertight and made of food-grade plastic. It'd work fine.

Now I want to make one with a purple (near-black light) LED and stick it into a gin & tonic.

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

Now I want to make one with a purple (near-black light) LED and stick it into a gin & tonic.

Absinthe would be similarly interesting.

Do you know that I spent a year as a lemon jumping in and out of a gin & tonic? Well, it was a pond that thought it was a gin & tonic ...

HHGTTG wrote:

"It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds."

Captain Ned wrote:

Absinthe would be similarly interesting.

One of the worst substances I have ever put in my mouth was home-made absinthe made by another member of the homebrew club.

And I even consider Malort to be drinkable... though I wouldn't willingly pay for it.