Anecdote from work about EE's - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: quixotix
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 31, 2015, 11:59:58 pm
content: I'm not sure how well this will "translate" for those outside of the USA, but here it is anyway. Also, while this really happened to me, it's possible that the gist of it is the punchline of a joke. I apologize if this is the case.So -- Two of my company's owners and I were in our sales managers office. The conversation got sidetracked and one of the owners mentioned a previous employee saying something like "We had a double E office manager..."It was obvious our sales manager didn't know what a "double E" was, but I was a little surprised by the shock in her voice when she quietly said "What!" Anyway, I leaned over and said "electrical engineer" to her.She started laughing. She then explained that she was shocked because she thought the office manager was being described as having very large (double E size) breasts. I'm not sure I'll ever see you EE's the same way again.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2016, 12:32:26 am
content: Well, I've been called a big boob....

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2016, 01:09:26 am
content: Similar to the story of the female manager who got upset at an engineer for using a variable named cnt because she thought it was short for "cunt"

author: Wilksey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2016, 07:46:30 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on January 01, 2016, 01:09:26 amAll depends who's asking though right?

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2016, 11:12:53 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on January 01, 2016, 01:09:26 amIt should be "count" if that is what it means. I have seen "cnt" used it in code written by a so-called engineer posing as a programmer. They love being a smart arse by using stupid and senseless abbreviations to create confusion.There is NO justification for needless abbreviations in code.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 01, 2016, 11:28:51 pm
content: Years ago I worked for a company that did e911 systems. They were using an Alpha Micro which was a unix like system. We were on with Alpha tech support while at a site an discussing their new disk caching engine which was called "SCSI dispatcher". We kept getting strange looks from the (911) dispatchers on duty at the time .

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 12:33:53 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on January 01, 2016, 11:12:53 pmIMHOcnt , int, def, char, ylo, blu, blk, grn, rev, fwd, efc, osc ....etc are all good in my bookBTW, ... if I was getting paid by the character...I'd use very nice long and desc var and const names, ( or at least I'd have my editor's auto complete do it for me )Until today's post regarding cnt I had never thought of cnt having a meaning other than counter when reading code.Reading Bukowski is another matter entirely, I would consider it a typo.The only time it could get confusing is if Bukowski wrote code. But he didn't.Few people can interpret things in context. Most cunt.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 12:51:46 am
content: Quote from: DimitriP on January 02, 2016, 12:33:53 amNo offence, but it is crap coding in my book.Is it ylo, or lol? lmao!WTF is efc?gtg!

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 02:27:46 am
content: Quote from: eugenenine on January 01, 2016, 11:28:51 pmNot sure why SCSI was pronounced scuzzy instead of sexy. Sounds much better.

author: fivefish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 05:13:37 am
content: But it's "computer", not "kamputer"Should be "scosi"... like in "Hey yo! Here's my scosi Vinny!"

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 05:26:57 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on January 02, 2016, 12:51:46 amIn early mainframe and DOS environments, there was a limit of 8 character names. You soon learned to work with abbreviations to create meaningful names. CNT would be a counter that might be part of a more descriptive name, such as LSTRXCNT for LastReceivedCount and LSTTXCNT for LastTransmitedCount. There was nothing slack about it - it was simply NECESSARY.Once you have become proficient with such cryptic names, you tend to run with them quite comfortably.

author: warp_foo
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 06:08:11 am
content: For years in the military we called wire cutters - diagonal cutters - dikes. I nearly got written up a few years back when I asked for a pair of dikes while working at a government data center.m,

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 06:21:26 am
content: Yikes.

author: Tomorokoshi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 06:32:39 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on January 02, 2016, 05:26:57 amComputers with limited RAM that were programmed in BASIC have this problem also. I left out spaces and made variables 2 characters long, which if I recall was the interpreter limit.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 07:32:49 am
content: Quote from: warp_foo on January 02, 2016, 06:08:11 amDikes for wire cutters is still quite common in a lot of places.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 08:07:20 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on January 02, 2016, 05:26:57 amI first started coding in 1977 and like you, I used abbreviations in the day out of necessity, like eight characters for the file name and three for the file extension in DOS. Some assemblers also had limited identifier lengths. But there is little excuse to do that these days. The world has moved on.Its a bit like limiting the number of columns to 80 in source code to cater for 80 column dot matrix printers or old monitors. It is.You might run with concatenated abbreviations, but if you were writing code that the next poor bunny has to decipher after you left your job, you just make life hard for him. Some time ago I was asked to refactor 50,000 lines of embedded frogshit written by three ex-employees who were clearly out of their depth, so the issue is close to home. It took me 18 months to clean up the mess. In that code there were things like...errrcntr = 0; // Set the error count to zeroAll they had to do was write...errorCount = 0;and no idiotic comment implying "I am a moron" would be required. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Add in hundreds of function names that had little to do with the actual functions, and about 200 cryptic file names, and a plethora of bugs, you can see why my tolerance level for sloppy coding is low. There were several subsystems, and the writers constantly confused TX and RX both throughout the code and in the terrible schematics. Another favourite of theirs was using the prefix word "update", likeUpdate_serial();The word "update" is ambiguous. The word "serial" is ambiguous too in this system (serial data? serial EEPROM? serial number?).

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 09:35:40 am
content: Quote from: warp_foo on January 02, 2016, 06:08:11 amPresumably the complainant has never heard the folklore story of the little boy who stuck his finger in a dyke.Seehttp://www.pantheon.org/articles/l/little_dutch_boy.html

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 02, 2016, 09:39:36 am
content: I got my first taste of programming in 1971 using a language called Focal (DEC equivalent of Basic) followed by Fortran, Pascal and a couple of others at Uni. I started application programming in my first full time job in 1978 with IBM assembler. I can still remember getting set up in a small office with a U-matic VCR and a series of workbooks for the self-study course.I never had to handle any programs of the size you mentioned - but I did have the classic program maintenance changes to make and dealing with the naming scheme developed by someone else was sometimes rather painful. One such change was a fairly straightforward one, with a curious labelling scheme that used a two letter suffix for labels within each routine plus a one character prefix that started at 'A' for each such label. I had to add a few instructions and a label in a routine with labels AOX, BOX, COX, DOX, etc. so, having recently encountered a book by Dr Seuss, the new label became FOXINSOX.I still have my yellow card (somewhere).

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 03, 2016, 02:03:18 am
content: My dearly departed father used the term dykes but he used the term for lineman's pliers. Wire cutters were wire cutters.