6502.org

In garth's linked article:
"A very smart engineer I worked with marveled at how I can quickly do logarithms (for decibels) in my head."

A couple of days ago I was discussing with some friends how big an elephant could grow on the moon. (It makes sense in context). I said: well, gravity is six times less, assume the "design" of an elephant is the best it can get, weight=fn(mass), mass=fn(size^3), so we're looking at the cube root of 6, so.... one point.... eight, ish. We then giggled that "kids today" would consider us witches. "How did you do that?"

Well.... 2^3 is 8, so that's too big, so let's start with 1.8*1.8*1.8, call it 18 so 18*18, call it 20, so 20*20 is 400, that's too big, so we need to take two 20s off, so 360, and we need to take two more 18s off, call it another two 20s, so that's 320, remembering that'll be a bit too small, so now times another 18, call it 20, so 640, that's too big, take two 20s off, 600, so around about 6.0, so the cube root of 6 is around about 1.8, so an elephant could be about 80% bigger on the moon than the earth.

Witchcraft!

calc.exe tells me 1.8^3 is 5.8, and Google tells me root(6,3) is 1.82ish, so good enough for government work.

I believe those of us who grew up before calculators were common (or indeed available) and entered an electronics career learned a few handy constants (root 2, log 2, pi) and of course the multiplication tables and handy squares... I know that even now I will often calculate areas by subtracting chunks from (or adding chunks to) a convenient 'round number' rectangle. My book of log and trig tables was very well thumbed by the time I left school at eighteen and my slide rule was getting worn out.
The Sinclair Scientific calculator - complete with RPN notation - was a wonder at the time, even though it ate batteries like they were going out of fashion.
I think that in electronics, most of the time you don't need more than the standard 0.6v Vbe, P=IV, V=IR, and the capacitor and inductor impedance equations

Neil

I've taken the plunge and spent the evening rewriting my CVs according to that advice, and I'll try using them for a bit and see what happens. It feels so wrong to chop everything out of the first page and dive straight into previous employment, and relegate skills and experience to later on, but I understand your argument.

One difference I've done is I've put my references in my covering letters rather than the CV, mainly because it would break the short CV past two pages but also because I use different references for different applications more than I use different CVs. I have three main CVs, but about 30 different covering letter templates.

Adding to your notes on how to write a CV, from my experience being on the other side and having to read them when recruiting I'd also add: if you send it in paper form, make it single-sided. Nothing is more frustrating than having to flip back and forth between two sides of a sheet to try and get to the contents. I want to have all the content visible all at the same time. And yes, some people do still insist on paper CVs, I went to a jobs fair last year where they specified that you take several copies of your CV with you. A handful of USB drives probably wouldn't have been acceptable.

Before I bought a calculator just before my O level exams, I did SIN, COS, TAN with pen and paper and remembering 5 constants: SIN0, SIN30, SIN45, SIN60, SIN90 (well, three as SIN0=0 and SIN90=1 - well, actually I only needed to remember SIN60 as SIN30=0.5 easy, SIN45=0.707 easy A4 paper ratio, 1 over root 2), approximating with straight lines, and COS=SIN(A-90), TAB=SIN/COS. Good enough for one decimal place most of the time.

A shame really, because using the _right_ USB drive could have ensured you were on the payroll automatically, without all that tedious interviewing and stuff

Hey, they were looking for programmers, right?

Neil

But ten bucks an hour, from everyone you can persuade to accept your USB, without the tedious necessity of ever turning up, or indeed doing anything... I guess it depends how right your USB is

Neil

Muh ha ha! Very devious indeed!
You mean... you had to memorize the Unit Circle?! *gasp* I tell my students to do this very thing in class, even just yesterday! I've got the whole thing in my head, from radians to decimals, but I'm supposed to because "I'm the teacher", right?

Good to see a lively discussion

Chad

About a month ago my son pointed out that these are just halves of square roots of consecutive integers - sqrt(0)/2, sqrt(1)/2, sqrt(2)/2, etc... my first reaction was "no way", then, "oh wow so they are". I certainly wasn't taught this way at school, but it does seem an easy way to remember them.

I've been browsing around various online CV template recommendations to get inspriation for updating my CV, one one thing I have to say is:

PUNCTUATE THE *******ING PHONE NUMBERS!!!!!!!!

077777333335355333 is unreadable. It is numerical diarrhea. There is nothing for your brain to hook onto to keep track of where you are. Is that six sevens or seven sevens? triple three?

0777 STOP
332 STOP
4567 STOP.
Readable. Discrete tokens that you can hold in your head as you process it, for example, TYPING IT INTO YOUR ***** PHONE TO CALL THE APPLICANT. 07777777777777888885 needs you to run your thumb across the screen to mask out digits to keep track of where on earth you've got to, or copy/paste it and edit it into readability.

Now, I can argue the One True Phone-Number Punctuation System to outlast the vi/emacs wars, but ultimately which method you use is irrelevant, just actually PUNCTUATE the ****er somehow.

(takes breath)

p.s. and when you invent a phone number entry field, invent one that accepts spaces... or even inserts them automatically. Many credit card entry boxes do this, and _some_ phone entry boxes, so it's possible.

And breathe...

Neil

It took over 20 years for the credit card thing to happen and it wasn't programmer laziness - it was bank dictation. Even when the cards themselves were grouped into 4 digits because the number internally was stored as a 16 digit PICTURE (COBOL, You know?) then no spaces...

Phone numbers are different in every country and mobile phones now accept spaces in the contacts list - early on, the phones would try to force the format to be the country of the programmer (usually the US) which doesn't work in the UK. Here in the UK we still have variable length numbers - 9, 10 or 11 digits long. (Including the leading zero), as well as 3-digit short codes (like the emergency 999 or 112) then there's local dialling - 4, 5 or 6 digits without the leading zero. (Although I've a funny feeling the last 4-digit area has now been 'upgraded' to 6)

Anyway, like analog TV, the UK is phasing out analog phones - welcome to the new digital world!

I used to run a VoIP telephone company and I allowed spaces (anywhere) in phone numbers in all the web front-ends, contacts lists and so on. It was simple to strip them - until some clown copy/pasted a non-blocking space from their word document. Hmph. Some people would type dashes - is that a regular dash (-) or a long dash (—) ?

-Gordon

I'd say the most important part of resume writing is to craft it specifically to get past the resume filters: The recruiter filter, the hiring manager filter, and the luck filter.

A recruiter's filter is pretty blunt. They're looking for keywords. If you don't match the keywords then you're dropped. Don't lie about your experience, but don't be shy. If the job posting asks for Python experience and you kinda know it, but you haven't really used it in production so you're not sure if it's honest to list it, definitely list it.

A manager's filter is more discerning. The composition, layout, logical flow, grammar, and punctuation of your resume say something about you, about how you approach tasks... The level of effort, attention to detail, and reviewing. If you can't be bothered to spell-check a resume, then how can you be trusted to work on code? The phone number format thing applies here: If you can't present information in a logical and readable way, then I can't trust you to write readable code or documentation.

Managers want to see the list of experience and technologies, but they also want a paragraph on your more recent work to get a feel of what you actually did, and therefore understand what level of engineering you've been doing. "Contributed to the release of version 6.0 of Widget Firmware" says nothing. I can't tell the difference between a weak engineer who is giving minor bug fixing tasks, and a lead engineer who both implements complex features and mentors junior guys. What did you DO? Wafflers get dropped. If I don't believe you in text, you don't get a chance to explain it.

Finally, the luck filter. I get so many resumes I usually discard the top half of the stack without looking. I don't want to hire unlucky people.

The game is to pass these filters so you get the opportunity to have a real conversation with a real human.