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brendan0powers

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Show HN: Bakelite – making it easier to communicate with your firmware

github.com
4 points·by brendan0powers·4 anni fa·1 comments

The Danger of “What If...”

brendanp.com
2 points·by brendan0powers·5 anni fa·0 comments

comments

brendan0powers
·anno scorso·discuss
One of the things I often find missing in articles and discussion of these topics here on HN is the understanding that different people are really quite different.

Articles or comments like this often read like moral judgements. You should be X to succeed. Being X works for me, and it should for you. If X doesn't work for you, it's your problem. There's usually little considering that achieving X may be significantly easier for some than others, or that there may be other ways of achieving a persons goals that work better for them.

This article is better than most in that it has a well defined scope, large organizations. I don't have any major problems with the content, other than I'd like some more time spent on wether the model they are applying is really as applicable to the situation as they claim.

I must admit to some bias, as I do no do well in large organizations, and the description of frustration in the article doesn't resonate with my experience of frustration at these orgs. I left the last place I worked because it was bad for my mental health. In many ways it was a dream job. It payed extremely well, I liked the people I worked with, and it wasn't that hard. Eventually though, I just couldn't do it anymore, and left for a small startup. I didn't realize how bad it was until I noticed I could still feel myself physically unwinding three months later.

I've been at this company for three years, and still love working here. It's absolutely not frustration free. I am however, much better equipped to handle the kinds of frustrations I face at this new company.

The author of the article says:

"It’s like learning to navigate a bustling city. At first, the traffic, noise, and crowds seem like overwhelming obstacles. But over time, you see these elements as essential aspects of urban life."

I've experienced this first hand after moving to NYC, and it's true, but it's also important to remember that some people just don't like cities, and that's Ok.
brendan0powers
·4 anni fa·discuss
This looks like a form Epic would send to software vendors who have not passed one of the industry standard security certifications (SOC 2, for example). This is common practice for large enterprises when engaging with new vendors. These are super obnoxious to fill out, but usually come with very large enterprise contracts, so vendors put up with them. It's certainly not normal to send these to maintainers of open source projects...

In this case I suspect the employee in question simply misunderstood the company process, and had no malicious intent.
brendan0powers
·4 anni fa·discuss
tl;dr If you've got an embedded system (Arduino say) and you need to communicate with it over seiral/USB/etc, Bakelite takes care of all the tedious bits like data serialization, framing, etc...

I wrote this after seeing many people implement their own protocols by hand, or try unsuccessfully to use Google's protobuf on embedded systems. Hopefully people find it useful!
brendan0powers
·5 anni fa·discuss
This is one of those things you just have to try and see if it works. I've quit caffeine completely for a few weeks, and didn't notice a difference in my sleep quality.