Software vs Hardware

matsickma

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I went to visit my son in Jacksonville, FL over the Labor Day weekend. I delayed my trip a day to avoid the hurricane. I was driving an Explorer full of clothes, books, etc. Down to his new apartment. He is a receint college graduate in Comp Sci and referres to himself as a software developer.

When I arrived his apartment was clean but Spartan. A young bachelor place. I noticed none of his lamps had any light bulbs in them and I asked him why. He said he didn't know light bulbs came in different socket sizes and he showed me light bulbs he had purchased that didn't fit hus lamps. They were roynd decorative bulbs with a small socket like a night light. I was taken back by his lack of this basic knowledge and thought I must have really overprotected this boy.

I said we have to run out to Walmart and get a few things including light bulbs. Since I'm an electrical engineer who never enjoyed writing software in college or my early work years and would say I am a real hardware engineer (antennas) I saw the perfect lead in to razz my son with the "how many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb" question. He looked at me and said "None. Thats hardware." !!!
 

walrus

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That's an excellent answer! You raised him well! :happy:

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fronobulax

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Well played.

In defense of your parenting, the internet is full of information about basic skills people who have allegedly graduated from high school lack such as balancing a checkbook, boiling an egg, washing clothes in an automatic washer, etc.

In a role reversal, my career was in software but it always amused me that when I worked for a company that built instrumentation radars, my job expanded to include radar tech and operator. During experiments I got to change the polarization on the antennas and helped re-aim them as needed. Any field repair that involved swapping parts or a soldering iron was also mine. People stopped telling hardware vs. software jokes around me :)
 

matsickma

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Haha...covered both sides... hardware guy would say AC/ DC or analog/digital. Not sure what a software guy would say but my software education was at a cusp of the philosophy in code writing.

My first Fortran course in a Spring semester taught you to use GOTO to redirect the next logic statment. My second course held the subsequent Fall semester outlawed the use if GOTO statments and mandaded IF/ THEN/ ELSE and WHILE/ DO statments. We were advised that uf we used a GO TO we will fail the course. Needless to say.... I didn't adjust well to this conflicting training. Bottom line...give me an Ohm Meter! 😀
 

walrus

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I never thought I'd see a post talking about the GOTO statement! LTG never ceases to amaze me... :rapture:

walrus
 

jcwu

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I was an electrical engineering/computer science major, with more of an emphasis in programming/software, but some awareness on the hardware side of things.

At my second job, I was doing testing, pretty much software only. When one of the test systems had an issue, I opened it, started swapping cards, memory, etc, to troubleshoot it. The manager came by and saw, and with not a little surprise in his voice, said, "Wait, you know how to do this stuff?"

Funny thing is, it wasn't even anything I'd learned in school - I learned it from watching my brother build and tear apart homemade PCs back in the early 90's!

I worry for this future generation. I've met many a young man who doesn't know how to change a car tire.
 
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