lederhosen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lederhosen) wrote2012-08-04 12:13 pm
lederhosen) wrote2012-08-04 12:13 pm
Entry tags:
In which I am ineptly ept.
Managed to fix* the programming problem for Tech Apps and got a very grateful phone call - apparently they'd been wrestling with this for weeks. I was coasting on a wave of "I AM A TECH GOD" until I remembered that I'd just spent six weeks procrastinating on getting my "broken" headphones replaced, before realising that I'd plugged them into the wrong port. So yeah.
Then almost called helpdesk to report a broken monitor before figuring out that if I unplugged it and replugged it, the problem went away. At least I did figure this out BEFORE calling them.
*FCVO "fix". TLDR version: they changed their code and couldn't figure out why the new results were slightly different from the old one. After staring at ~150 pages of code for two days and looking up the mathematical technique involved I was able to tell them: "probably not a bug as such". The old code calculates an approximation; the new one calculates an approximation for the same data via slightly different methods, so there's no guarantee that it'd give the same results.
Problem is that figuring this out requires (a) understanding of the maths involved and (b) familiarity with IML, which isn't exactly a Top Ten programming language.
Then almost called helpdesk to report a broken monitor before figuring out that if I unplugged it and replugged it, the problem went away. At least I did figure this out BEFORE calling them.
*FCVO "fix". TLDR version: they changed their code and couldn't figure out why the new results were slightly different from the old one. After staring at ~150 pages of code for two days and looking up the mathematical technique involved I was able to tell them: "probably not a bug as such". The old code calculates an approximation; the new one calculates an approximation for the same data via slightly different methods, so there's no guarantee that it'd give the same results.
Problem is that figuring this out requires (a) understanding of the maths involved and (b) familiarity with IML, which isn't exactly a Top Ten programming language.