Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips I encounter this situation often when reading the Help Wanted ads (the kind we have today online). The job description and requirements are far too specific. I have experience being unemployed and trying to find a new job. I don’t like the experience, but I learn a few things now and then. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When confronting something that looks odd, show it to an old person. They may have seen this before and can explain it. Many years ago, a programmer saw an odd way to demodulate amplitude modulation. The method didn’t resemble any of the equations or diagrams regarding amplitude modulation (AM, or that radio […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Did the system we are building pass the test? Wrong question. Let’s consider the purpose of testing. We have been testing the system we are building. The first question is almost always, “Did the system pass the test?” Wrong question. What these anxious folks want to know is, “Will the system do […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It is only healthcare and security in old age. Not very important, huh? In the recent past, I joined Medicare (yes, I am that old). Let’s see, just go to a government website, fill in the blanks, and viola’. Well, being a technically savvy person, I did that, or tried that. All […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is a tried and true method of gathering requirements and specifying systems. Imagine you had a thousand assistants. There are various methods of gathering requirements and specifying systems. A basic one is to imagine a thousands assistants awaiting your request. If you had a thousand assistants, what would you have them […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The most important computer processor ever made was the Intel 8087 (well, a little exaggeration). Spend more money on hardware or more money on smarts? The decision is still with us. It was 1980. Intel had just released the 8086 CPU—a computer on a chip that worked on 16 bits at a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An old political phrase can be applied to just about any endeavor as a test of how awful bad something is. Once again, we are in the time every four years in America when we have the seemingly endless campaign for President of the United States. This year, more than in the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let’s stop hyperventilating about this and that AI thing. The marketplace will decide and with more wisdom than myself. I just read yet another article about yet another artificial super-duper large language model. How can a model of something be larger than the something? Isn’t a model a smaller representation of something? […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We often have the experts looking up at someone atop the pyramid who simply doesn’t know much of what they are saying. There is supposed to be an expertise pyramid. The lone person atop the pyramid has more expertise than all those below. That is how the person reached the top of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Show it, break it, fix it, make it better. My two older grandchildren were at my house recently. They are both teenagers now. The older was showing the younger a game that the older programmed. The younger tried an example that broke the game. Angst, frustration, embarrassment, etc. Then the older set […]

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