BF2S Forums EE Chats 2142

Jay wrote:

I have a celtic cross on my leg wrapped in thorns. It was supposed to be barbed wire, as in, stay away, christianity sucks, but I got it in Georgia and the tattoo artist was religious and refused to do the barbed wire. When people see it now, they assume I'm religious and compliment it, so it works out I guess. When you're 19, militant atheism is cool and shocking. When you're approaching 40 it's embarrassing. Thank you Mr. Religious Tattoo Artist, you saved me from having it removed with a laser.

One of my brothers has a celtic cross tattooed on him. He also has the anti-swastika tattoos that were all the rage in the punk scene on both forearms.  He left for boot camp with no tattoos and came back with I think 5. Teenagers make dumb decisions.  He has had to wear long sleeves to every job he's had since he got out of the Marines.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Jay wrote:

I have a celtic cross on my leg wrapped in thorns. It was supposed to be barbed wire, as in, stay away, christianity sucks, but I got it in Georgia and the tattoo artist was religious and refused to do the barbed wire. When people see it now, they assume I'm religious and compliment it, so it works out I guess. When you're 19, militant atheism is cool and shocking. When you're approaching 40 it's embarrassing. Thank you Mr. Religious Tattoo Artist, you saved me from having it removed with a laser.

One of my brothers has a celtic cross tattooed on him. He also has the anti-swastika tattoos that were all the rage in the punk scene on both forearms.  He left for boot camp with no tattoos and came back with I think 5. Teenagers make dumb decisions.  He has had to wear long sleeves to every job he's had since he got out of the Marines.

I left the army with 3, but the other two are on my chest and upper back so people only see them if I'm swimming.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

doesn't he have the pepsi logo on his leg or am i thinking of someone else?

poseidon had the grateful dead logo.

nice, i took a certificate program last year for web development.  Having literally zero experience in any type of coding beyond some very simple visual basic, it was like drinking from a fire hose at first.  It took 6 months but it was a nice skill to add to the repertoire.  The only issues I didn't like was that the realtime database we used was firebase, which isn't THAT widely used, and even though we had a crash course in CSS, we relied heavily on bootstrap for the framework.

I'd be interested in taking another course, but the time sink was pretty rough.

It's not a bad skill to pick up even if you have no immediate practical use for it. You already mentioned future proofing, and some concepts carry from language to language. I picked up a bunch during college, but I don't think it's a job I'd particularly enjoy unless it was in relation to games.

There's a bunch of kids who aren't smart enough to be anything else but wrench turners.

uziq wrote:

coding is useful but it's one of those jobs with a dangerous overlap with labour markets like india, where people have passable english language skills and will do the same coding for lots cheaper. of course there's a huge market for certain types of coder/data scientist in the west, and that's not going to change anytime soon, but in general i would say most of the donkey-work of coding, like all IT jobs, is going to be massively undercut by developing labour abroad (especially as their education and english language skills improve).

the wrench turning comment reminds me of a funny bit by stanhope:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsPDT5qHtZ4

kind of, but passable english and being able to properly use syntax and language in coding are huge differences.  Look at the nonsense SEO threads here for example - yes, there are english words strung together in sentences, but they are no means coherent or approaching a level beyond a 10 year-old's grasp of the language.

The concepts and logic can be taught to anyone with half a brain, and as mentioned above by others, there are numerous logical and constructive elements that can be useful in other areas, but people already have issues with using and revising code that hasn't been developed in house; outsourcing exacerbates that frustration.

I think most of the "donkey work" as you so eloquently put it will be replaced by code modules and snippets, but those may be put together by developing labor!  There's been a huge push to migrate native applications to the web (and "cloud"), so there's a lot of opportunity in the web dev world.  I was far more interested in the backend mechanics and integration than writing a cool javascript program, but it all was good learning.

I heard China produces more engineers per year than the U.S. does. I am sure they are lower quality but China is trying to build it up too.

In engineering terms the Chinese are around level with the rest of the world, and central planning means they can run mega-projects.

India could remain third-world forever.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

I heard China has 4x the population of the U.S.

Made in China 2025 is a real plan.  They are trying to accelerate from a majority manufacturing economy into more tech and services.

One of the benefits of an strong centralized, authoritarian government is they can enact years-long plans on a massive scale and control the execution of that plan.

They also misallocate and squander tremendous amounts of both human and material resources. Sure, they get stuff done, but it's inefficient, brute force, and completely inelegant. Quality control is completely absent because the end result of a finished product they can put in a report as progress is the only thing that matters to bureaucrats.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

In our capitalist country we just don't build anything useful anymore period.

I like the concept of a Green New Deal. Weather proofing older homes, flood walls, sewers etc. would be a fantastic thing to do.

All of that stuff is already being done. There are already state agencies that subsidize home improvements to make them more energy efficient. People get rebates when they install energy star rated appliances. It just doesn't get headlines because it's not sexy and the money is spent by the millions rather than trillions.

Most of this stuff gets taken care of in the building code. Most municipalities, NYC included, take the International Building Code as their own, including the International Energy Code. Whenever someone submits work for a permit it's required to comply with the building codes. This code sets standards for everything from ventilation, to fire protection, to framing and insulation. Again, this is not sexy stuff that will "remake the world" but it already exists and has been implemented. It's boring incremental change, but it's already occurring.

David Brooks and his desire for big grandiose projects like the Three Gorges Dam can suck a dick. Real progress is made every day, he just wants some big gesture that he can feel proud of as an American. Look around, our cities are wondrously complex and surprisingly efficient. He just can't see the millions of people working every day to improve and maintain everything because he's an elitist piece of shit that turns his nose up at the sorts that perform the work. We have no more rivers to dam and nearly every green energy project gets NIMBY'd to death. The greatest infrastructure project approved in the past dozen years was a stupid train through the california central valley that will lose money hand over fist for its entire lifespan.

Last edited by Jay (2019-02-07 08:50:05)

DesertFox- wrote:

We're still not doing nearly enough to compensate for how inefficient our lives are. Hell, Ford stopped making sedans because people are back on this godawful SUV/crossover craze. There may not be any new TVA style projects, but it's going to cost a pretty penny to properly maintain our existing infrastructure to where it should be.

No, Ford stopped making sedans because Americans don't buy Ford sedans. Do you want a Taurus? When was the last time you saw an American sedan on the highway and didn't automatically assume it was an undercover cop?