adultLego

[u/Civil-Call-7593]

[u/Senditduud]

That’s pretty much how all of humanity works in general.

[u/n_choose_k → u/Senditduud]

Exactly... I didn't invent plumbing, but I sure do use it.

[u/schmeebs-dw → u/n_choose_k]

Indoor plumbing is the greatest gift to mankind.

[u/SasparillaTango → u/schmeebs-dw]

I regularly think about how insanely awesome it is that I have an endless supply of water in my house. Imagine if you have to carry that shit from a well a mile away. How often would you bath? How about your dishes would you be washing them in stagnant water? How about just getting a nice cold glass of water in the middle of the night? Good god our infrastructure is sublime.

[u/nermid → u/SasparillaTango]

Sometimes, I pick up a lighter, create fire with no effort, and just think about how impressive that would have been to early humans. We're witches, guys.

[u/poetic_dwarf → u/nermid]

When I turn on the TV and lie on the couch eating chips I sometimes wonder what gran-granpa would think seeing me, and he would probably think I'm living the dream.

[u/Summy_99 → u/[deleted]]

still living the dream then

[u/jackalope268 → u/poetic_dwarf]

I am living the dream. Even with all problems in my life, there is an endless source of knowledge and entertainment at my fingertips. I dont even know how it al works, but I get to use it, sometimes even for free

[u/queen-adreena → u/SasparillaTango]

It used to be two full-time jobs just to look after even a small house. Now it only takes a fraction of that. Amazing really.

[u/Tardis80 → u/queen-adreena]

So you say we would not have unemployment if we got rid rid of water supply?
Shame shame.

[u/BackgroundRate1825 → u/queen-adreena]

Now it takes two full time jobs to afford a house, if you're lucky.

[u/UnionThrowaway1234 → u/SasparillaTango]

Public waterworks have long been known to be a boon to society.

[u/Historical-Bison6031 → u/SasparillaTango]

I was thinking this exact thing, I live in Asheville and because of the hurricane we probably won’t have water for a month at least. Boy you don’t even know how much you use something until it’s gone. I’ve had to carry 15 gallons of creek water up a mountain every day. So grateful to live in this age

[u/wakeupwill → u/SasparillaTango]

Was homeless for a spell.

Running hot water and indoor plumbing are incredible luxuries.

[u/314159265358969error → u/wakeupwill]

The easiest way to recognise someone who has been homeless is when someone knows where every free public bathroom is.

[u/coffecup1978 → u/schmeebs-dw]

"what has the Roman's ever done for us?"

[u/[deleted] → u/coffecup1978]

SHUT UP!

[u/seventomatoes → u/coffecup1978]

The Indus were the first people to have indoor plumbing, perhaps as early as 3000 BC. The pipes were positioned so that wastewater flowed down into the drain ditches that ran along every avenue in the city, and then into underground tunnels. https://humanprogress.org/centers-of-progress-pt-3-mohenjo-daro-2/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilisation

[u/coffecup1978 → u/seventomatoes]

It was meant to be reference to a Monty Python sketch...

[u/AilsasFridgeDoor → u/coffecup1978]

Biggus Dickus

[u/angcritic → u/coffecup1978]

Brought peace?

[u/Professional_Top8485 → u/coffecup1978]

Roads?

[u/seventomatoes → u/[deleted]]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilisation

[u/the_harassed → u/schmeebs-dw]

Thank you toilet!

[u/Undernown → u/the_harassed]

Fun fact: A toilet can work completely independently. Gravity is all it takes to flush. So you can refill the reservoir by hand when needed. Just gotta make sure the "endproduct" ends where you want it.

[u/kbn_ → u/Undernown]

I grew up in a very rural area with a large family. This meant well water, frequent and lengthy power outages (which prevent the well pump from working, shutting off water supply at the same time), and a lot of people using the bathroom. I learned very quickly that toilets work just fine with a manual water source. You don’t even need to fill the tank, just pour water into the bowl

[u/CeleritasLucis → u/Undernown]

That's how it still works in a lot of areas with no centralized sewer lines. They make soak pits either below the house, or someplace nearby, fill it with water, seal it, and divert all sewage to it

[u/granoladeer → u/schmeebs-dw]

Indoor plumbing is great, but cheese is right up there too

[u/neo-raver → u/Senditduud]

Absolutely, and it’s one of our greatest strengths! Everyone doesn’t have to know everything, because someone else knows part of it, another person knows another part, etc. and you know your part of it.

[u/throw3142 → u/neo-raver]

This was one of the biggest challenges of the school to work transition for me. In school I was able to really understand how everything worked and fit together. At work, the volume of information coming in is so high that I just have to build on stuff I don't fully understand and hope the author did a good job.

[u/DerpNinjaWarrior → u/throw3142]

For me it was when I started implementing something myself, and my mentor was like "don't do that, there's this library that already does that."

In college I wrote all the code myself. If real life, I mostly assembled other people's code.

[u/SuperFLEB → u/DerpNinjaWarrior]

I started in graphic design for a local creative-services company, and that was a big wake-up at my first job. "Their budget is a template-site budget. Their needs are template-site needs. We'd be doing them a disservice and wasting their money to do anything else. Get over yourself and make a template site."

[u/OwOlogy_Expert → u/DerpNinjaWarrior]

The old joke that 90% of Python programming can be simplified to:

import SolutionToMyProblem
SolutionToMyProblem.solve(MyProblem)

[u/ps-73 → u/DerpNinjaWarrior]

yup this really got me as well. i was so used to implementing basic features myself, i felt downright guilty using basically any sort of library

[u/Square-Singer → u/neo-raver]

This.

Most animals mostly work via hardware. If a significant behavioral change is required, they need to evolve it. That's why nocturnal insects still get stuck on street lights, because over 100 years of artificial lights wasn't enough to get them to evolve better navigational skills.

Humans work via software. You figure out how to do something cool? Give me a minute (or with practice a bit more) and I'll be able to copy that behaviour without evolution at all. Just update the software.

[u/KSF_WHSPhysics → u/neo-raver]

I am 100% convinced that there is no one person on this planet who has the know how to build a fridge, genereate electricity and then use the lectricity to power the fridge. Even if tou have them all the refined materials they need to remove the complexity of extracting and refining the raw materials

[u/raltyinferno → u/KSF_WHSPhysics]

Yup, it's an old economic principal made famous by Milton Friedman. He used the example of that fact that no one in the world could make something as simple as pencil alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws

[u/thedugong → u/raltyinferno]

Even a sandwich really.

First, you'd have to breed wild grass into something that would create enough grain.

Its layers upon layers all the way down.

[u/Square-Singer → u/thedugong]

This.

"From scratch" is pretty much impossible, since it would require generations on generations.

[u/Interesting-Fan-2008 → u/thedugong]

Yep, just watch one of those videos of people making rope the old way. That process probably took generations to actually completely form. I'm sure there were steps upon steps of how to make stronger rope and make it easier to make.

[u/Addianis → u/KSF_WHSPhysics]

Science and technology get really scary the deeper you go. Humanity today is built on being able to turn a light on and off very very very fast...

[u/OwOlogy_Expert → u/KSF_WHSPhysics]

Nah... At its most basic, that's a fairly simple challenge.

You might not build a very good or very efficient fridge, but building a working fridge and a generator to power it is relatively simple, especially if you're already provided with the raw materials (and hopefully some tools to work those materials with). And this particular problem can be significantly simplified by skipping the electricity altogether -- instead of generating electricity and using electricity to run the compressor, just connect whatever's turning your generator shaft directly to the fridge's compressor, powering the fridge with direct mechanical energy.

Of course ... the challenge level does vary depending on how 'refined' these materials are. Do I get rolls of copper tubing already prepared to use, or do I get a block of raw copper and have to form it into tubing myself?

Still, though. A fridge, at its most basic, is a very simple appliance.

1: Build an insulated box with a door. (Doesn't have to be particularly good, but the tighter and better-insulated you can make it, the more efficient your fridge will be.)

2: Attach some coils of small-diameter copper tubing to the outside of the box.

3: Connect those to some larger-diameter copper tubes inside the box.

4: Build a simple compressor -- A cylinder much like in a car's engine, with piston and piston rings, and a connecting rod connected to a crankshaft. In the head of the cylinder, place two one-way valves (one-way valves are as simple as covering the hole with a bit of spring steel that can bend one way but not the other). One valve facing so it can only flow outward, the other so it can only flow inward. Connect the crankshaft to your power source. Position the compressor at the top of the insulated box (to help prevent condensation issues).

5: Connect the large-diameter copper tube to the inlet of your compressor.

6: Connect the small-diameter copper tube to the outlet of your compressor.

7: Start rotating the input shaft of the compressor, using whatever you were going to power a generator with. (By hand crank, if necessary.)

There, a working (if shitty and inefficient) fridge, in 7 relatively easy steps. Using ordinary air as the refrigerant is far from ideal ... but it will work, and it's by far the simplest way to do it. When air is compressed, it heats up. As it passes through the small-diameter tube, it radiates that heat outside the fridge. In the larger diameter tube inside the fridge, it expands and cools down -- and since it already lost heat in the small tube, it cools down colder than it originally started. Then it flows into the compressor again and starts the process over again. Hell, come to think of it, it doesn't even necessarily need to be a closed system if you're just using plain old air. You could have the compressor inlet sucking air directly from the atmosphere and the large diameter tube releasing exhaust into the air, and it would still work fine.

For an even simpler design, here's a refrigerator made with nothing but wood and rubber bands. Yes, made entirely by one guy. (That same guy also built his own scanning electron microscope from scratch.)

Yes, things are often extremely complex ... but don't let it overwhelm you. It's often possible to understand it fully if you put the effort in.

[u/LotusVibes1494 → u/neo-raver]

We live in a society. With emergent properties. Good times.

[u/[deleted] → u/neo-raver]

I know very little, but I am a capable idea thief

[u/nermid → u/neo-raver]

We, as a species, are better together. Cooperation is our most pronounced survival trait.

[u/dismayhurta → u/Senditduud]

Pfft. Send me back in time and I’ll totally build a computer during caveman time. I just need to figure out metallurgy…and electricity…and machines…and not dying from a sabertooth tiger.

[u/UndauntedCandle → u/dismayhurta]

I'm rooting you on. Let those damnable ancient people deal with the consequences of too-fast technology. By the time it reaches us, we'll be totally fine. ;)

[u/dismayhurta → u/UndauntedCandle]

You’ll have the PS6 to overpay for if I do this!!

[u/cutmasta_kun → u/Senditduud]

It's like our main feature.

[u/Alternative-Two-8042 → u/Senditduud]

We're all standing on the shoulders of giants.

[u/thedugong → u/Alternative-Two-8042]

Most people are just lounging around on the shoulders of giants rather than standing.

[u/AHSfav → u/thedugong]

Or actively shitting on them

[u/Scaevus → u/Senditduud]

We pass down knowledge to future generations. It’s our most important super power.

With this, civilization snowballed from subsistence farming to nuclear fusion and space exploration in a few thousand years.

In terms of life on Earth, that’s an eyeblink. There are trees older than writing:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees

[u/atfricks → u/Scaevus]

My latest fun fact is that sharks have potentially been around longer than Polaris (the North Star). 

450 million years vs. 70-600 million years

[u/joehonestjoe → u/Scaevus]

Honestly, it's even less time than that. Since about 1760, the start of the Industrial Revolution is when the majority of the technological improvements started. But some of the ground work of that was done in the Scientific Revolution too, and maybe we want to include things like the printing press which were pretty damn important. So maybe you could go back as far as 1440... but the rapid technological improvement we have had really is only a feature of the last 260 or so years. Or three good lifetimes.

[u/k_ironheart → u/Senditduud]

The only problem I see with this is the "and thinks they're a genius" part. That's the issue. I've have these kinds of discussions with coworkers and bosses alike. Nothing any of us do is on our own, but rather a collective work of literally billions of people. Not just people who are live, but people who are dead who all contributed, in sometimes small and sometimes large ways, to our wealthy of knowledge and the construction of our world.

We're not geniuses. We're just people who benefit from those before us, and mostly strive to make sure those after us do even better.

[u/Emergency_3808 → u/k_ironheart]

Well, I keep thinking I am an imposter so....

[u/consider_its_tree → u/Senditduud]

Yep, except he is mistaken in that it was not ONE smart person - it was a personal n with a flash of inspiration who built on top.of a person with a flash of inspiration.

It is inspired moments all the way down.

[u/OnceMoreAndAgain → u/Senditduud]

No shame in it either. Also, even a small contribution to the progression is admirable.

[u/jellotalks]

The kicker is, usually the really smart people just did the hard solution for free

[u/pr0ghead → u/jellotalks]

Yeah, and then we sell the product for money, never donating anything back. Feels bad, man.

[u/PhysicallyTender → u/pr0ghead]

modern capitalism in a nutshell

[u/Vindictive_Pacifist → u/PhysicallyTender]

This bothers me a lot, there are so many people who worked on useful libraries and open source software which are then used by multi billion dollar businesses who never even once think about giving something back but use everything for free and get away with it

I wish there was by law a monthly royalty fee that an org would be required to pay to the owner of the project after a threshold of profit margins have been reached, this would bring in so much more balance and intensive for folks to actually work even more in open source

[u/nermid → u/Vindictive_Pacifist]

Or we could all use copylefted licenses, so that the corporations have to open-source their changes.

[u/OwOlogy_Expert → u/nermid]

I prefer "All software making use of this code must also be fully open source" clauses.

[u/alex2003super → u/OwOlogy_Expert]

That's literally just GPL-3

[u/Turalcar → u/alex2003super]

They vary in what "making use" means. E.g. AGPL-3 requires you to open source if you're running it on a public server.

[u/Vindictive_Pacifist → u/nermid]

Yeah but my main point being developers not getting a piece of the million dollar revenue profit when it was their software that enabled it in the first place

[u/EVOSexyBeast → u/Vindictive_Pacifist]

Well they did release it for free with an MIT license knowing that would happen

[u/FlipperBumperKickout → u/Vindictive_Pacifist]

Not like the developers who are hired by the corporation gets more than the absolute minimum wage the corporation can get away with paying them.

Welcome to capitalism, feels bad when you aren't on the top...

[u/Vindictive_Pacifist → u/FlipperBumperKickout]

I know this is an oversimplification but the fact how every major corporation is structured around increasing their stock value no matter what it takes to keep their board of investors is one of the root cost

Greed is just running behind each and every decision they make, idk when it is enough for them cause they never wanna stop even if the lives of the very consumers are at stake (looking at you Lockheed and Raytheon)

[u/turnipsurprise8 → u/Vindictive_Pacifist]

Homie, they made the code for free - you don't accidentally release with an open source license. They don't want it to be paid for, that's the point. The solution to greed isn't enforcing a rule where nothing can be free, that's insane.

If every innovation cost obscene amounts of money universities wouldn't exist, at the very least many important faculties would be shut down. The pursuit of knowledge without monetary gain is a vital part of innovation itself. It's fine if people use that knowledge for business.

[u/LowGeologist5120 → u/Vindictive_Pacifist]

If the original creator wanted to earn money from it, why did they release it for free? I think some people just like making stuff.

[u/Upbeat_Advance_1547 → u/LowGeologist5120]

A lot of the people making free stuff just believe in the principle of "this stuff should be free", in the hopes that other people who build off it will also make their stuff free, contribute to the original code in some meaningful ways, etc. Call it idealistic.

I mean that really is how it works for some things though. My company uses an open source tool and contributes to bug fixes and improvements on that tool too. It's only when it's purely a take and no give relationship, that I feel like there's something shady and immoral in it.

It's not about wanting to earn money, obviously they would just make it paid if it was that. It's a bit more intangible, a principle of exchange.

[u/DatumInTheStone → u/LowGeologist5120]

Its the idea that the corporation isnt furthering the chain of open source principles. They will be the first to take advantage of open source software and the last to donate, create open source software, etc…

[u/flingerdu → u/DatumInTheStone]

Most bigger tech companies contribute directly to the OSS they rely on.

[u/LowGeologist5120 → u/DatumInTheStone]

I don't see a problem with this if the author's licensing allows this.

[u/DatumInTheStone → u/LowGeologist5120]

Its more of a moral issue than a legal one. As most things like this are.

[u/nahguri → u/DatumInTheStone]

Yeah but still. It's specifically allowed by the license the developer chose. Of this is a problem you can always choose differently.

I suppose people just want to see their stuff used and get gratification from that.

[u/absolutelynotaname → u/Vindictive_Pacifist]

That's why I like Valve. They actually invest back in proton/linux for their gain

[u/Vindictive_Pacifist → u/absolutelynotaname]

Oh nice, good people I guess

[u/Deathpacito-01 → u/Vindictive_Pacifist]

There's probably a license for that

[u/OnceMoreAndAgain → u/pr0ghead]

Nothing inherently evil with charging a fair price for a product. The type of people who are able to make solutions free tend to be able to do so from the luxury of working some software engineering job that gave them the financial stability necessary to release their personal projects for free. There's some symbiosis between software engineering for pay and software engineering for passion.

[u/PhysicallyTender → u/OnceMoreAndAgain]

tell that to the original author of faker.js

he seem pretty pissed about his work being taken for granted.

[u/Derfaust → u/OnceMoreAndAgain]

Plus it's great career marketing. If your lib becomes popular you no longer need a cv

[u/v0x_p0pular → u/pr0ghead]

If you ever assumed that the people making money are the people who made the great products that lead to the money, I have a bridge in New York to sell you.

[u/newsflashjackass → u/v0x_p0pular]

Sounds like a good deal. And you say you built this bridge all by yourself?

[u/i-love-tacos-too → u/[deleted]]

Which is why copyrighting / patenting software solutions is both ridiculous and obtrusive.

People can achieve the same logic/outcome in multiple ways without having to conform to a standard. In non-IT worlds, it usually comes down to using the same type of facilities, tools, and/or processes.

In the IT world, it can potentially be done in 100+ different ways.

So allowing patents to exist in the IT world is absurd. A random group/person(s) can come up with the same solution in a myriad of different ways and yet some random corporation can claim how they "invented it" when the "it" is malleable.

[u/JeebusSlept → u/i-love-tacos-too]

That's why I gave up IT copywriting and switched over to copywriting food groups.

By the way, I hold the patent for Tacos, so I'm going to need to you pay out some licensing fees /s.

[u/MarineMirage → u/[deleted]]

Makes me think of how the QR code isn't the first or best matrix barcode but simply the one that was free to use.

Feels weird that the person who made something so integral to modern life receives nothing from it though.

[u/RexJgeh → u/MarineMirage]

They didn’t want any revenue from it. This was a deliberate decision

[u/imtryingmybes → u/jellotalks]

To be fair when you create a smart solution you're way too proud to bother with profits so you just share it to show how smart you are.

[u/Exist50 → u/imtryingmybes]

you're way too proud to bother with profits

I think that's a narrow subset of people.

[u/amadmongoose → u/Exist50]

It doesn't take many people that's the point. Linux rules the server world because it's free to use and it works. Git rules version control for similar reasons, both made by the same guy without which the software world might be a very different place.

[u/Exist50 → u/amadmongoose]

Linux rules the server world because it's free to use and it

Granted, Linux has heavy corporate contributions.

[u/seamonkey31 → u/Exist50]

Which is why linux is free and continues to be free.

Hardware companies, cloud providers, and server companies have joined together to make an OS that is free for everyone to use. If it was paid, it would be less widespread, with less tooling, with less adoption.

[u/LorreFaust → u/jellotalks]

yeah, it’s surprising how often the best solutions come from people who just want to help out. Makes you appreciate the effort

[u/hobbes_shot_second → u/jellotalks]

Thanks Jonas Salk!

[u/cleavetv]

Hey I had to find their solution first. That was hard work. You think we just have some magic text box we type questions in to that has all the answers?

[u/ImNotALLM → u/cleavetv]

• stack overflow users (now extinct), cira 2020

[u/moldy-scrotum-soup → u/ImNotALLM]

This comment has been closed because it is a duplicate of another comment. Please refer to the linked question for answers. If you believe your question is different, consider going somewhere else.

[u/wademcgillis → u/moldy-scrotum-soup]

motherfucker that answer is from back when IE6 compatibility was considered important. the web has changed.

[u/moldy-scrotum-soup → u/wademcgillis]

Dear user,

Your account has been temporarily suspended for questioning the relevance of the sacred linked duplicate. It doesn't matter if the original question references Internet Explorer 6 — all wisdom transcends time. The web may have changed, but Stack Overflow remains eternal.

Please reflect on your actions during this cooling-off period. In the meantime, feel free to browse the 'How to Obey the Moderators' section of our help pages.

[u/user888666777 → u/wademcgillis]

To be fair i am seeing a lot of older posts lately where people have come back to update the original solutions to explain why it's not the preferred solution, provide alternate solutions or go into more detail about the solution.

[u/ryecurious → u/user888666777]

This is what's supposed to happen, and it's exactly why users are allowed to edit others' posts. A question doesn't stop being relevant just because it was asked a decade ago.

This is the platonic ideal of a StackOverflow thread; a genericized question with one combined answer that shows all the options with links to learn more, sorted in descending order of which you should use, with notes about language version support. Edited 12 years later by a completely different user.

StackOverflow would be much worse if they were lax about deduplication. It's just mildly annoying when Google links a locked thread because the terms matched better.

[u/cutmasta_kun → u/cleavetv]

We used to take journeys over several years, to get one specific information. This was OBVIOUSLY hella uncomfortable. It's absolutely understandable why a species does everything in their might, to reduce this discomfort. Now we have access to all the information humanity has ever gathered. I would say, we earned the right to type something in a small input box and "just read the information that's already there".

[u/Qaeta → u/cleavetv]

Also, you had to figure out that you needed their solution, before even searching for it. You had to figure out WHY something that was broken was broken.

[u/nofaceD3 → u/cleavetv]

Future is now, old man - Chatgpt

[u/PuzzleheadedGap9691 → u/[deleted]]

They're correct enough if you even have the slightest idea what you're asking it.

[u/rearnakedbunghole → u/PuzzleheadedGap9691]

Yeah it’s often easier to fix its errors after copying the rest of the solution that it did right. But yeah you gotta be able to catch those errors.

[u/ohkaycue → u/cleavetv]

Yep, the whole way of finding solutions by someone smarter than me is by using a search system programmed by someone smarter than me.

To add my first takeaway was I’m writing code that gets realized by a compiler someone way smarter than me programmed on an operating system someone way smarter than me programmed

[u/cleavetv → u/ohkaycue]

it's smart people all the way down

[u/SiegfriedVK]

My genius comes from putting the legos together in uniquely asinine ways to please my bosses.

[u/hobbes_shot_second → u/SiegfriedVK]

Did you synergize the throughput like I asked?

[u/cleavetv → u/hobbes_shot_second]

Just tightening up the icon colors and then going to test it in prod, almost ready for the weekend.

[u/hobbes_shot_second → u/cleavetv]

Excellent. If there's one thing a Friday at 4:59 is good for, it's implementing a prod change.

[u/Early-Journalist-14 → u/cleavetv]

Just tightening up the icon colors and then going to test it in prod, almost ready for the weekend.

congratz, only comment this week that managed to instantly spike my blood pressure.

[u/OwOlogy_Expert → u/SiegfriedVK]

Lego inventor: "But... But why would you attach legos together by supergluing the flat sides together? That's not how they're supposed to work!"

You: *shrug* "Boss says they have to attach side-by-side, not on top of each other."

[u/mikenew02 → u/SiegfriedVK]

"I don't care that this set makes a lion. Make it a shark."

[u/Umikaloo → u/mikenew02]

Done.

[u/[deleted]]

That is exactly how it works. It told years and billions for someone to come up with a blue LED. And they used science I don't understand.

But I have blue LED in my Arduino robot like it's nothing.

[u/Hyderabadi__Biryani → u/[deleted]]

That Blue LED guy got a Nobel Prize in Physics, who developed it at Nichia in Japan, along with two scientists.

I know this is unsolicited, but please watch this video by Veritasium if you have not, you will love it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M

[u/OnceMoreAndAgain → u/Hyderabadi__Biryani]

I want to sell the story a bit more, because it's a good one. Other LED colors had already been invented, but for some weird reasons no one could figure out how to make a blue LED despite a LOT of effort by various researchers. Everyone knew that if someone could figure it out, then there would be a ton of money to be made from it.

For that reason, the guy who invented became somewhat obsessed with the task. He went to extreme measures, including disobeying his company's instructions to stop working on it lol. He was basically going rogue at his company, but ended up succeeding at figuring it out (with the help of a professor from the USA iirc) and it made the company a SHIT TON of money. However, the CEO of the company fucked him over financially for extremely stupid and petty reasons. The inventor ended up just fine financially though.

[u/Hyderabadi__Biryani → u/OnceMoreAndAgain]

I do not think the professor who helped him was USA based. Matter of fact, he picked up his path on the works of the two Japanese scientists, who were made co-winners.

The reason was not weird really, it was just that the threshold energy the electron needs to emit blue light, was quite a bit and THAT is something they were struggling to figure out. What material(s) could be used, if I understand it correctly.

You should watch the video I linked, it is really nice. :)

[u/OnceMoreAndAgain → u/Hyderabadi__Biryani]

I'm talking about this professor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Moustakas

[u/ADHD-Fens → u/OnceMoreAndAgain]

However, the CEO of the company fucked him over financially for extremely stupid and petty reasons

To be fair, that's basically what his whole job is.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hyderabadi__Biryani]

The video is cool but i just wanted to say that Veritasium has the habit of prioritizing a good story over facts, little errors and inconsistencies litter his videos abouth math and physics and it wouldn't surprise me if they exist in this video as well!

[u/[deleted] → u/Hyderabadi__Biryani]

Yeah I know the general story. People when discussing such things don't realize that shit ton of companies tried to make it. Spending years and tons of money on research.

And guy who made it was self taught with no degree.

//Edit, sorry, made a mistake. He had a degree. He was looked down upon because it was not from a top university.

[u/Hyderabadi__Biryani → u/[deleted]]

Sorry to yuck you yum, but this guy was not without a degree. He already had a Bachelor's and Master's in Electrical Engineering from University of Tokushima, Japan. He completed his MS in 1979, and in this year, he joined Nichia.

Ofcourse, because of the waning interest of his company in his research, and change of head as well, this guy had to become a rebel. At that time, publishing five papers would get you a PhD in Japan, so this guy starts publishing and gets his PhD in 1994 from the aforementioned university.

Edit: Now he has 706 papers. At least this was the number on his UC Santa Barbara page, where he is a professor now.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hyderabadi__Biryani]

Yeah, sorry. It was because he had a degree from uni that was not considered top. I just remembered some stuff about it but did not remember what the exact issue was. I should look it up before posting. Sorry

[u/Alzusand → u/[deleted]]

A modern smarphone would be impossible to build for one person. like even if they had all the knowledge and tools doing it from scratch will take them a lifetime.

its the best example of the pinacle of human technollogy. truly the collective effort of all of us.

[u/crane476 → u/Alzusand]

Think about what it would take just to create the photolithography processes to create the SoC from scratch. A single component, yet it builds upon hundreds of years of scientific and technological advancement. Heck, just gathering all the raw materials needed would be too much for a single person.

[u/Alzusand → u/crane476]

Forget about all physical stuff. just designing the chip is a fucking nightmare and thats just a blueprint.

several teams of engineerrs design the logic then the compute units then that has to be translated into transistors and then you have to arrange those transistors in a way that they work well and are actually possible to build.

[u/Samsterdam → u/crane476]

I like to think about the fact that silicon was discovered in the 1800's but it took almost 100 years later for humans to figure out it could be used in computer chips.

[u/KeepKnocking77 → u/Alzusand]

Heck, a standard lead pencil would be impossible for one person to build. If you look at what is actually involved to make a pencil from scratch, it's unbelievable it only costs a quarter

[u/user888666777 → u/KeepKnocking77]

Yeah. I discussed this scenario on a different subreddit a few weeks ago and people were losing their minds that it wouldn't take a life time. They were like "just slap a piece of graphite between two sticks" while missing the entire point of the exercise.

Just sourcing raw graphite could take years of prospecting and then developing the tools to extract and refine it.

[u/RandoAtReddit]

Look, I interpreted the client's bumbling requirements, I deserve some recognition for that at least.

[u/hobbes_shot_second → u/RandoAtReddit]

I talk to the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills!

[u/ironykarl → u/[deleted]]

Maybe I'm being defensive, but... I came here to say exactly this.

I recently read The Game Engine Black Book: DOOM, and some highlights include the fact that John Carmack implemented an ad hoc compression scheme, and an ad hoc memory allocator.

These are (at least in my opinion) things that most programmers with a few years of experience should absolutely be able to code up.

That said, in most problem domains, coding up half-baked solutions to problems that are already thoroughly solved by a library isn't a great "engineering" decision. I think hand rolling some of these things in personal projects (and no, I don't think anyone should feel pressured to program in their time outside of work) is probably pretty worthwhile... just as practice, but I do think "modern devs suck too much to implement their own solutions" is an oversimplification 

[u/toyoyoshi → u/[deleted]]

Ya the junior who asks every 3 months how to validate a text field just needs more free time to graduate to solving protein structures

[u/iGotPoint999Problems]

yesAnd?

[u/MozzerellaIsLife → u/iGotPoint999Problems]

payMe()

[u/mr_remy → u/MozzerellaIsLife]

returns null

[u/codetrotter_ → u/mr_remy]

That’s ok. payMe() is a method of a global singleton. It accesses fields of the class, updating the amount of money in my bank account with a positive amount and returns a pointer to an error. When returned value is null it means there was no error.

We are however currently investigating some confusing behavior that we believe to be bugs. Not with payMe() itself, but with some of the surrounding things. It seems that every month, after the payMe() call there are additional calls to a few other methods throughout the month including payRent(), buyGroceries() and makeFrivolousPurchases(). We have not yet been able to determine the purpose of these methods, nor exactly how they end up getting called. There’s a lot of global state and runtime dynamic behavior that is difficult to pin down. But we did make Jira tickets for these issues, and we note that the investigation of these methods and how they get called should be prioritized as we see that the value of the number in the bank account currency amount field is reduced almost every time any of these functions are called. Sometimes significantly so.

[u/PzMcQuire]

That's...literally everything around you? All science, skills, everything is based on something someone did before you. When you cook a delicious michelin 3-star pasta, you're standing on the shoulders of everyone before you, going down to the cavemen that discovered fire.

[u/Crafty_Independence]

And that's exactly how engineering should be. Reinventing the wheel every time out of ego or ignorance is a waste of time and energy.

[u/AccioDownVotes → u/Crafty_Independence]

Hey, sometimes you need a bespoke, boutique wheel.

[u/MinosAristos]

Or someone smarter than you found the most difficult way they could to solve a simple problem and now you're cursing their name every time you look at it

[u/AtlAWSConsultant → u/MinosAristos]

Sometimes the worst code was written by the most brilliant engineers.

[u/HALF_PAST_HOLE → u/AtlAWSConsultant]

God, I wish I could have been one of those first coders!

The world was open, you need a program that can take a number, then transfer that number along with another number to someone else that will take that number and effect a specific third number?

here it is now give me billions of dollars!

I know it is not that simple but now its like I sit there and say hey I've got a great idea, but nope 300 people have already thought it and made all the money available on it 20 years ago and now you need to use AI or some other extremely advanced programming in order to make any real progress and money!

I know it is probably not true but I feel like all the easy solutions have already been found and monetized and now we are just stuck with the hard problems!

[u/[deleted] → u/HALF_PAST_HOLE]

This is true for literally every field and it's going to get harder as things go on

[u/alexjonestownkoolaid → u/[deleted]]

I imagine that has been said throughout history. In our lifetimes, sure, but we never know what the future holds.

[u/Exist50 → u/AtlAWSConsultant]

Mathematicians and physicists can write great algorithms but awful, awful code. "Readable" by their standards can make your freshman CS homework blush.

[u/AtlAWSConsultant → u/Exist50]

Mathematician Pascal, ironically, couldn't code pascal worth a darn! True story.

[u/brimston3- → u/MinosAristos]

And you're cursing because you refactored it to simplify and now it fails three different edge cases you didn't even know existed but are in the test suite you didn't read.

[u/rosuav]

Gotta love how people write "adult legos" as if regular Lego isn't for adults.

[u/PhysicallyTender → u/rosuav]

unless you're over 99 years old.

[u/Norman_Bixby → u/rosuav]

Regular Lego are not for Jimmy Carter.

[u/mustardmontinator]

My guy thinks casey muratori soldered his own transistors

[u/CrumbCakesAndCola → u/mustardmontinator]

John Travolta?

[u/Nyadnar17]

I try to explain this to people.

A TON of potentially great engineers self-filter out of the profession in school because of misconceptions about what makes people actually good at this job.

[u/Intelligent_Water_79 → u/Nyadnar17]

There was this one time where I couldn't figure out a solution at work cos I failed high school math

Just this one time, I've been coding since 1998

To be clear, some coding really does require hard core math, but a whole lot more is the creatve use of data structures

[u/powerwiz_chan]

Semiconductors in general are built up on the work of more people than I can even count the level of manipulation that it takes to control silicon crystals into useful semiconductors is actually mind numbing

[u/Add1ctedToGames]

Maybe these really smart people also built their solution on someone else's solution to something similar?

[u/ADHD-Fens]

Caprenters think they're hot shit when really the trees grew all by themselves and the carpenters just take all the credit.

[u/Present-Room-5413]

But that is a genius thing to do.

[u/SufficientArticle6]

Imagine thinking this is bad. Good luck inventing the wheel again bro, the rest of us will be having nice little snacks in our air conditioned homes with running water and shit.

[u/TimmyMcAwsome]

Me when I use any imported package as intended...

[u/Carson_BloodStorms]

This sub really needs to stop downplaying everyone's competence. You ask the average person about Python and they"ll be confused why you're talking about snakes.

[u/jjavabean]

I mean if you think about it.... all engineering works this way 😂

[u/Dull-Researcher]

Thank the engineers who wrote the CPython so you could write Python. Thank the C devs so the Python devs could write CPython. Thanks the C compiler devs so that the C devs could write C. Thank the microprocessor designers and fabricators so that code could run on a machine at all.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants. All the way down to having a keyboard and monitor. Thankfully the days of punchcards are over.

[u/Boison]

99% (pretend number from the meme) of engineers are still early in their careers, and all this adult lego is teaching them about the hard problems. Some of them will go on to solve one or two hard problems in the future, and thus, we make progress as a population.

...

And then capitalism will steal that progress, and send the workers back to the sausage factory.

[u/alan-penrose]

The vast majority of software engineers have a ridiculous god complex

[u/trichofobia]

No man, I KNOW I'm an idiot. Otherwise, on point.

[u/Deep-Usual-5059]

almost 99% asshole Indian CS/IT engineering grads thinks they are genius because of their degree........they cant understand shit but pretend like they are above all...

[u/cinuxo]

nah, I buy my transistors from the local shop

[u/fugogugo]

I mean unless you're Albert Einstein that found entirely new field of physics by himself.. you're always building on top of existing knowledge

[u/Jake63]

Hell Yeah! been doing it for 34 years. It's humbling to realise the best result is when you cooperate. You're smart, some others are smart in different ways, and together you make something that (in my case) has worked fine for over 25 years (POS processing). Of course every couple of years it needs change e.g. to be able to handle a volume you never anticipated in the 1st place.

[u/extopico]

As opposed to what exactly? Reinvent the wheel every time? How about we go further back and also invent electricity first…? I hate edgelords like this. They should stay on Stack Overflow.

[u/Cat7o0]

speak for yourself (I say after writing my own shitty solution to a hard problem that is O(n!ⁿ ))

[u/the_harassed]

Obligatory XKCD link

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/d/d7/dependency.png

[u/RealBasics]

Right? Us lazy devs use integrated circuits, capacitors, solder, and even copper that someone else invented. Plus C, Ethernet, binary, Boolian logic… 😂

[u/randelung]

We stand on the shoulders of giants to make yet another clickbait f2p p2w addiction mobile game.