Author Topic: Anyone ever feel like what they're working on is beyond them? (Computer Folks) (Read 2468 times)

T234 · « **on:** January 05, 2009, 03:16:41 PM »

Just beyond their own level of comprehension in every way?

I feel like that every time I open the program, it was built by someone better than me in every way at this. And here I am taking this collection of programs and turning them to run in a space that is only used for pornography. It took a team of top-flight Professional Software Engineers a long time to do what I am trying to do by myself, a Man who has never written a single line of C++ code before the project. TWO large and different fellows from out west (one of which made this browser I am using) have plans of their own in the exact space where I would be, and will be done before me.

64,000+ bugs to squash before the bitch will even start.

Bocsius · « **Reply #1 on:** January 05, 2009, 03:33:36 PM »

I hate having to look at other people's code period.

I especially enjoy being given somebody else's code in a language I've never used and it usually comes with the question "so how long do you think it will take?"

T234 · « **Reply #2 on:** January 05, 2009, 03:49:13 PM »

In my case I've been handed about 900,000 lines of code.

demi · « **Reply #3 on:** January 05, 2009, 03:51:36 PM »

Quote from: T234 on January 05, 2009, 03:16:41 PM

Just beyond their own level of comprehension in every way?

I feel like that every time I open the program, it was built by someone better than me in every way at this. And here I am taking this collection of programs and turning them to run in a space that is only used for pornography. It took a team of top-flight Professional Software Engineers a long time to do what I am trying to do by myself, a Man who has never written a single line of C++ code before the project. TWO large and different fellows from out west (one of which made this browser I am using) have plans of their own in the exact space where I would be, and will be done before me.

64,000+ bugs to squash before the bitch will even start.

You have a cousin named Rebel and all you do is drink and be completely annoying. There is a reason these people are above you.

T234 · « **Reply #4 on:** January 05, 2009, 03:53:27 PM »

HOW BOUT THEM ADVENT RISING SALES FIGURES? LIT THE MOTHERFUCKING CHARTS UP DIDN'T IT?

T234 · « **Reply #5 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:01:19 PM »

Demi ain't got much to troll, Cohen. Nothing much about him is public knowledge.

I will say that Jewco is the vastly better administrator. Even in absentia.

GilloD · « **Reply #6 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:11:28 PM »

I think everyone feels this way about their "art". Almost always the best way forward is just to be prepard and start doing.

demi · « **Reply #7 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:12:10 PM »

Quote from: T234 on January 05, 2009, 04:01:19 PM

Demi ain't got much to troll, Cohen. Nothing much about him is public knowledge.

I will say that Jewco is the vastly better administrator. Even in absentia.

Clearly I am cooler than Willco.

T234 · « **Reply #8 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:15:18 PM »

But you fail on the hot-china-girl-with-a-fetish-for-Jewish-golden-chocolate-in-her-hair action!

demi · « **Reply #9 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:21:46 PM »

Chinese gives me the runs

T234 · « **Reply #10 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:26:01 PM »

Demi, that's a cop-out, man. Genuine Chinese will suit you fine.

Unless you're gonna go Jeffrey Dahmer. In which case you're just gonna have to eat again in a few hours.

drew · « **Reply #11 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:28:50 PM »

chinese makes me want to lay down

then im hungry 2 hours later

recursivelyenumerable · « **Reply #12 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:40:07 PM »

Quote

I feel like that every time I open the program, it was built by someone better than me in every way at this. And here I am taking this collection of programs and turning them to run in a space that is only used for pornography. It took a team of top-flight Professional Software Engineers a long time to do what I am trying to do by myself, a Man who has never written a single line of C++ code before the project. TWO large and different fellows from out west (one of which made this browser I am using) have plans of their own in the exact space where I would be, and will be done before me.

64,000+ bugs to squash before the bitch will even start.

Quote

In my case I've been handed about 900,000 lines of code.

do your employers have any idea what they've asked you to do?

T234 · « **Reply #13 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:51:12 PM »

I only employ myself. It's just something I thought about doing and then wake up the next day and read about everybody and their brother doing it. The funny thing is, I actually got a Java Applet to work for Notepad++, but OpenOffice.org is a completely different beast. Especially crushing was the reading that there will be fucking 4 companies doing the same office on the web shit (Microsoft, Google, Zoho, and Ulteo. The last two are using OpenOffice, and are as small as the first two are big.).

The only place I get paid to be is Wal-Mart. And it eats shit.

recursivelyenumerable · « **Reply #14 on:** January 05, 2009, 04:58:44 PM »

yeah, you might want to think a little smaller for your first C++ project. but have fun. you'll probably at least learn something from rooting around in those codebases.

T234 · « **Reply #15 on:** January 05, 2009, 05:11:25 PM »

This project has taught me more than my entire college career as up to this point.

When I first mentioned this project to a friend of mine, he was just like "maybe right after this, you should write an operating system too", while laughing like a goddamn madman. I should do that next just to shut him up.

recursivelyenumerable · « **Reply #16 on:** January 05, 2009, 05:16:28 PM »

compilers are cool too!

T234 · « **Reply #17 on:** January 05, 2009, 05:32:06 PM »

Truth. I still don't really know much about them.

I think one of my greatest strengths is that I think about things differently then other people in my area of study, because I never knew how things worked in the first place, so I just think how I'd do it, and completely disregard any prejudice with how people did it in the past, because I never knew anyway.

Bocsius · « **Reply #18 on:** January 05, 2009, 05:47:02 PM »

Quote from: T234 on January 05, 2009, 05:32:06 PM

Truth. I still don't really know much about them.

I think one of my greatest strengths is that I think about things differently then other people in my area of study, because I never knew how things worked in the first place, so I just think how I'd do it, and completely disregard any prejudice with how people did it in the past, because I never knew anyway.

I've done that a handful of times. It has always pained me when I later found out there was some canned process that accomplished exactly the same thing yet did it far more efficiently and with less lines of code required of me.

I believe the first time was when I discovered the IsNumeric function back in my VB days. Oh did I feel like a tard. It has progressed from there.

Van Cruncheon · « **Reply #19 on:** January 05, 2009, 09:33:57 PM »

no

everything is comprehensible given enough energy

...

energy :'(

T234 · « **Reply #20 on:** January 05, 2009, 09:46:00 PM »

Quote from: Professor Prole on January 05, 2009, 09:33:57 PM

no

everything is comprehensible given enough energy

...

energy :'(

I am a rogue with Adrenaline Rush. I will never run out of energy.

You guys should totally hire me to dispense Red Bull and Coffee and learn how to code at the same time.

recursivelyenumerable · « **Reply #21 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:06:35 PM »

:'(
right now i'm trying to find a bug in some hastily written (not by me) code with 200-line functions and shit. i can probably figure it out, but the problem is that i have trouble focusing for more than about 30 seconds at a time before i lose my will to live

Bocsius · « **Reply #22 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:07:57 PM »

Quote from: recursivelyenumerable on January 05, 2009, 10:06:35 PM

:'(
right now i'm trying to find a bug in some hastily written (not by me) code with 200-line functions. i can probably figure it out, but the problem is that i have trouble focusing for more than about 30 seconds at a time before i lose my will to live

I thought you lost that a while back.

Bocsius · « **Reply #23 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:08:45 PM »

Quote from: Groo on January 05, 2009, 10:08:03 PM

64,000 bugs in 900,000 lines of code? That's quite an achievement in itself!

Probably just one or two missing semi-colons. Cascading errors after that.

recursivelyenumerable · « **Reply #24 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:09:57 PM »

Quote

I thought you lost that a while back.

point

T234 · « **Reply #25 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:17:12 PM »

Quote from: Groo on January 05, 2009, 10:08:03 PM

64,000 bugs in 900,000 lines of code? That's quite an achievement in itself!

It's not when I just ran the code through a PERL script I made to replace C++ specific things in the OOo source that don't exist in JAVA with things that MAY work in JAVA when I have not written a line of code in either language.

Van Cruncheon · « **Reply #26 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:37:45 PM »

Quote from: T234 on January 05, 2009, 10:17:12 PM

Quote from: Groo on January 05, 2009, 10:08:03 PM
64,000 bugs in 900,000 lines of code? That's quite an achievement in itself!

It's not when I just ran the code through a PERL script I made to replace C++ specific things in the OOo source that don't exist in JAVA with things that MAY work in JAVA when I have not written a line of code in either language.

wat

just

wat

spoiler (click to show/hide)

wat

[close]

recursivelyenumerable · « **Reply #27 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:48:17 PM »

automated conversion tools won't get you very far, the semantics of the languages are fundamentally different and even the syntax of C++ is notoriously hard to parse properly (are you trying to do this with regexes?

). writing a "real" converter would be a Ph.D.-dissertation-level project (at least).

Van Cruncheon · « **Reply #28 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:56:06 PM »

yes, he is trying to do it with regexes

i suspect it's a bunch of $line =~ s/c_symbol/java_symbol/ig;

Van Cruncheon · « **Reply #29 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:58:11 PM »

admittedly, i wrote a c# to vb.net code sample converter in about 25k lines that worked about 75% of the time

and even with the massive semantic similarities between the two .net languages, it was still a miracle at the time

T234 · « **Reply #30 on:** January 05, 2009, 10:59:47 PM »

That's just the first thing I did. And what sucks alot too is that most of the comments are German, and I know no Germans who are willing to translate that much text.

I am learning ALOT from this project.

Prole, it's way more complicated than that, but that shit still isn't working so good.

Brehvolution · « **Reply #31 on:** January 05, 2009, 11:00:52 PM »

Wow!

How much time can pass before you're found out to not know what you need to do?

Code IS a fickle bitch!

Olivia Wilde Homo · « **Reply #32 on:** January 05, 2009, 11:03:42 PM »

What is your major and why haven't you written C++ before this massive ass project? Seems kind of odd that they thrown you in the deep end like this.

I wanted so badly to be a computer programmer, I took two C++ courses when I was 16, and got the hell out. Never looked back.

recursivelyenumerable · « **Reply #33 on:** January 05, 2009, 11:11:11 PM »

have you gotten to anything involving pointers yet?

anyway you'd probably be better off, even from a pure learning-experience pov, just picking a small bit of the functionality to reimplement by hand with reference to the original code. or if you really want to pursue the program transformation angle, pick up a few books on programming language semantics, compiler design and implementation, etc. and start by converting a small toy source language (perhaps a subset of C) to a restricted object language. but you're looking at years of study and years of work before getting to anything like your original goal.

T234 · « **Reply #34 on:** January 05, 2009, 11:14:08 PM »

Yeah, pointers are my main problem. Them shits get complicated.

recursivelyenumerable · « **Reply #35 on:** January 05, 2009, 11:16:12 PM »

wait, you got Notepad++ to work as a Java browser applet? seriously?

T234 · « **Reply #36 on:** January 05, 2009, 11:19:38 PM »

Yep, not very stable, but she starts!

T234 · « **Reply #37 on:** January 06, 2009, 12:51:09 AM »

Quote from: Green Shinobi on January 06, 2009, 12:39:10 AM

Aren't there a bunch of Germans on this very forum?

Use the tools at your disposal, man.

There is a VERY LARGE amount of text.

WAITAMINUTE OH FUCK ONE OF MY REGULAR EXPRESSIONS IN THAT PERL SCRIPT I WAS USING FOR THE NOTEPAD++ CONVERSION BUT I CHANGED IT UP FOR THE OPENOFFICE CONVERSION FOR SOME DUMBASS REASON REMOVES ALL OCCURRENCES OF // AND STILL LEAVES THE COMMENT OH MY FUCKING GAWD I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS SHIT :'(

:'(

:-

Reb · « **Reply #38 on:** January 06, 2009, 04:28:38 AM »

When I was 23 they put me in charge of a department with 25 demotivated bookkeepers, a big backlog of work and I was asked to make cost cuts.

So yeah, I know about freaking out about work projects.

News:

Author Topic: Anyone ever feel like what they're working on is beyond them? (Computer Folks) (Read 2468 times)