Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
-
Whenever I come across some acronyms...
CD-ROM: Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months
PCMCIA: People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
ISDN: It Still Does Nothing
SCSI: System Can’t See It
MIPS: Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed
DOS: Defunct Operating System
WINDOWS: Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
OS/2: Obsolete Soon, Too
PnP: Plug and Pray
APPLE: Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity
IBM: I Blame Microsoft
MICROSOFT: Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers
COBOL: Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language
LISP: Lots of Insipid and Stupid Parentheses
MACINTOSH: Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs10 -
Step 1: Run to the store to buy a USB card reader because all of a sudden you have a need to use a 16Mb CF card that was tossed in a junk drawer for 20 years (hoping it still works, of course), but that was the easy part...
Step 2: Realize that the apps - your own - you want to run on your new (old) Casio E-125 PocketPC (to re-live "glory" days) are compiled in ARM format, not MIPS, which is the CPU this device uses, and the installer packages you have FOR YOUR OWN APPS don't include MIPS, only ARM (WHY DID I DO THAT?!), so, the saga REALLY begins...
Step 3: Get a 20-year old OS to install in a Hyper-V VM... find out that basic things like networking don't work by default because the OS is so damn old, so spend hours solving that and other issues to get it to basically run well enough to...
Step 4: Get that OS updated so that it's at least kind/sorta/maybe (but between you and me, not really!) safe online, all without a browser that will work on ANY modern site (oh, and good luck finding a version of Firefox that runs on it - that all took a few hours)...
Step 5: Okay, OS is ready to go, now get 20-year old dev tools that you haven't even seen in that many years working. Oh, do this with a missing CD key and ISO's that weren't archived in a format that's usable today, plus a bunch of missing dependencies because the OS is, again, SO old (a few MORE hours)...
Step 6: Get 20-year old code written in a language you haven't used in probably almost that long to compile, dealing with pathing issues, missing libs, and several other issues, all the while trying to dust off long-dormant knowledge somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of your brain... surprisingly, it all came back to me, more or less, in under an hour, which lead to...
Step 7: FINALLY get it all to work, FINALLY get the code to compile, FINALLY get it transferred to the device (which has no network capabilities, by the way, which is where the card reader and CF card came into play) and re-live the glory of your old, crappy PocketPC apps and games running on the real thing! WOO-HOO!
Step 8: Realize it's 3:30am by the time that's all done and be VERY thankful that you're on vacation this week or work tomorrow would SSUUCCKK!!!!
Step 9. Get called into work the next day for a production issue despite being tired from the night before and an afternoon of errands, lose basically a whole day of vacation (7 hours spent on it) and not actually resolve it by after midnight when you finally say that's enough :(
Talk about your highs and your lows.6 -
1) Built an entire SoC around a MIPS CPU. Fixed bugs in the CPU. Created hardware, busses, firmware, wrote Linux drivers, ported Linux.
2) Still working on a C++ abstraction framework for heterogenous computations for 4 years. About to solve / create a prototype for GPGPU and maybe even HDL code generation. Utilizes dynamic dispatch for scalar, SSE, AVX and other targets. I started this only because I did not like the performance of procedural noise algorithms utilized in a game prototype I started in 2015.
3) Created a game in 5 months to drag myself out of depression. Feeling success while your job sucks is soooo goooodd...13 -
The challenge: a Dell Latitude XPi CD 133ST. It has a Pentium 133MHz, 32MB memory, and a 2GB HDD. I think I have some CD's with Mandrake from the late 90's. I hope. And mission impossible, an IBM Workpad z50 with a MIPS 4000 and 8MB split 50/50 between storage and program memory. Think that one will just be a large paper weight or door stop.17
-
CIA – Computer Industry Acronyms
CD-ROM: Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months
PCMCIA: People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
ISDN: It Still Does Nothing
SCSI: System Can’t See It
MIPS: Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed
DOS: Defunct Operating System
WINDOWS: Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
OS/2: Obsolete Soon, Too
PnP: Plug and Pray
APPLE: Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity
IBM: I Blame Microsoft
MICROSOFT: Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers
COBOL: Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language
LISP: Lots of Insipid and Stupid Parentheses
MACINTOSH: Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs
AAAAA: American Association Against Acronym Abuse.
WYSIWYMGIYRRLAAGW: What You See Is What You Might Get If You’re Really Really Lucky And All Goes Well.2 -
I was developing a project for the software engineering course. We we're building a sort of mips instructions simulator that would show you the path the signal takes while it's traveling in the CPU.
So after almost finishing everything, the professor asks us to add a voice over feature that would tell you what is happening while you go through the animation.
You can only understand this if you see it. It's very funny and stupid.
The website is http://mipssimulator.com
Make sure sound is on.
Edit: the site is kinda glitchy on mobile so try loading it on a computer for better results.5 -
That feeling when your friends' college life kind of depends on you helping them out in this assignment using a low level programming language (low level means it was meant to operate on the machinery level) that you were really good in at the first semester. Then you realize that you have forgotten a lot of things just because the logic and approach ist totally different from the high level programming language and you forget how a programming language works once you stop using it and it takes time to dive back in and you really like being friends with them. Now all you're left with is with the fear of letting them down.
-
CIA – Computer Industry Acronyms
CD-ROM: Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months
PCMCIA: People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
ISDN: It Still Does Nothing
SCSI: System Can’t See It
MIPS: Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed
DOS: Defunct Operating System
WINDOWS: Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
OS/2: Obsolete Soon, Too
PnP: Plug and Pray
APPLE: Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity
IBM: I Blame Microsoft
MICROSOFT: Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers
COBOL: Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language
LISP: Lots of Insipid and Stupid Parentheses
MACINTOSH: Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs
AAAAA: American Association Against Acronym Abuse.
WYSIWYMGIYRRLAAGW: What You See Is What You Might Get If You’re Really Really Lucky And All Goes Well.
Credit to: http://devtopics.com/best-programmi... -
Completed units where the faculty chooses to specifically code in python.
Gets MIPS assembly code thrown at us for 3 weeks only.
Goes back to Python...
Next Unit jumps to Linux, spends 8 weeks on Linux, gives all the students a 10 page assignment in Javacc worth 20% , linked to a 46 page doc they must read and learn on their own... -
rant === true
I despise university. Since I went there, I have stopped learning exciting and new technologies. Instead, I do mips, lisp and Java.
I mean I wouldn't mind java, but it's boring repetitive crap. Making stupid simulations - all the fucking time.
I can not be bothered to learn this shit anymore. It's not worth 9k a year.
I'm lost. I don't know what to do. I can not physically do this anymore.
Edit:
Also, I hate this industry. All they want is a cs degree u til you have 2 years experience and then fuck it. It's a 50 k passport... wtf.3 -
Sometimes Idk if it's MARS (a MIPS Assembly simulator) slowing down progressively on my laptop on purpose, or if my specs just can't take my runs of my Space Invaders project that was due for today, but...
With the parameters I put for my PC, it worked just great. But on the university PC, I can't tell what's worse between playing my game or playing Touhou 6 at 650FPS. -
Just finished an Assembly homework... For the first (and hope the last) time in my life I complained about arrays starting from 0.2
-
My study assignments in assembly for this semester are done.
I'm glad. However, I'll probably miss it, as I have other projects/things to tend to that won't allow me to carry on with these studies.
It's such an easy, yet primitive thing. Coding simple programs with it is quite enjoyable and relaxing and I'll miss that a great deal. -
First time building Android...
6 hours syncing repos + 3 hours building and still working.
I don't even know remaining time.
Oh yes, I'm on a Core2 Duo with 4Gb RAM...5
Top Tags
Weekly Rant
View