The best non-fiction book I have ever read is 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb'[1] by Richard Rhodes.
Fantastic early history of the people that eventually comprise the Manhattan Project. I feel any person who is interested in physics should read the book.
It is mindblowing the scale of the facilities that they had to build to generate a very small amount of the fissile material needed.
Strangely enough, I started on (a few times already) the second part, 'Dark Sun' [2], which is about the making of the Hydrogen Bomb focused on Edward Teller but I haven't been able to complete it yet.
The show was talking about chip packaging companies to create the end usable chips from the silicon produced.
Just for the construction work alone, they mentioned that the pipefitters local union membership has doubled since 2020. Refinery level complexity on the specialized piping needs for the plants.
Special training programs geared towards the semiconductor industry being offered in the local Community and Trade schools training people to be the skilled and semi-skilled workforce for these companies.
People who were teachers now making four times the income working on the construction project.
I have been listening to Kai Ryssdal's Marketplace on NPR/KQED the last few days on my commute home from work.
The topic for the last several days was on the CHIPS And Science Act and the new Semiconductor Fabs being built by TSMC and Intel in Phoenx, AZ.
It will be several years before the plants already being constructed will go into production but there is a whole ecosystem of current construction, education of the future workforce that will need to be hired in the future. Not to mention all the ancilliary companies that are needed to support these gigantic plants in the area.
The dollars from CHIPS Act are not only bringing in the manufacturing plants but will be essential to bring this lost capability back to the US in the scale needed both from an economic and national security perspective.
It was great listening to the show and the impact the CHIPS Act on people's lives already happening now and in the future.
For anyone interested the links to the specific shows are available as podcasts here.
Early in my career I once optimized an inherited 10,000+ line C program to less than 500 lines. It was a C program making SQL calls into a Sybase database.
No, not because I had some brilliant insight but for the simple assumption that my predecessor may not have been aware of how to write functions or use parameters to supply variable data to the SQL query. They had literally written the same SQL statement inline with a couple of changed values in each SQL call.
I just rewrote the code making the SQL call as a function call with bind variables as parameters into the function. All the replicated inline code was replaced with the function being called in a loop with the changed bind values supplied from an array.
I started out my computing journey on the ZX81 learning little BASIC programs. I graduated to a full color MSX Spectravideo [1] afterwards. I loved making little graphics programs and playing with the sound chip.
I wish I had seen the original articles in time to order one from the first batch. I am eager to order one when they decide to make another batch.
I wonder if anyone recalls the little worker robots in the 1972 movie "Silent Running". [1]
I don't know what it was about those fellows but I felt emotionally attached to them. It was not that they had any visible means of conveying emotions. They just went about their tasks quietly and diligently.
For some reason they pulled at my heart strings. It was quite heart wrenching to see them destroyed in the last part of the movie.
Even though NASA would likely have restablished connection with Voyager 2 sometime in October during the next pre-scheduled alignment window there would be an element of uncertainty about its health. However they have detected signs that the spacecraft is still functioning.
What an amazing project and a testament to the foresight to plan for such eventualities.
For those new to MicroPython or to the ESP8266 line of microprocessors here is a talk that I gave at a PyCaribbean conference in 2017. [1]
Its a bit long winded but I tried to touch upon everything that a new entrant to the space would want to know to start playing with the board immediately.
I am not a natural public speaker so please excuse my verbal (or other) tics.
I have also linked the presentation PDF. [2] You can scan the entire PDF in less than 10 minutes to get the gist of the 45 minute+ YouTube video.
When I am forced to use a Windows environment I find myself reaching out to these evergreen tools in many situations and is frustrated by having to find workarounds to these tools that should be ubiquitous tools in any OS.
Everything I learned almost 30 years ago still holds true today when it comes to the basics.
And yes I know of Cygwin, MKS toolkit etc, but trying to convince corporate IT in a Microsoft Centric world to install these usually hits a brick wall.
A very good choice Karsteski, probably one of the best online CS programs out there. Wishing you the best in getting in.
I have embarked on another MOOC catering to a business degree and still figuring out how to balance course load with personal and professional life but I am loving it.
Learning a lot and the courses encourage group/team assignments working with students from all over the world. Learning to navigate the global team work model.
Have you tried some of the old "Graphics Gems" series books yet? [1], [2], [3] They are not CS fundamentals but will help you out with the necessary concepts, math and algorithms for graphics programming and ray-tracing.
As others have mentioned any books on Data Structures & Algorithms are a must. [4], [5], [6]
However in my opinion, trying to understand CS fundamentals without undergoing some sort of formal education is a chore. You won't know what you are missing. Going through an established approved syllabus will give you a fuller understanding. But that is only if you are interested in the long haul.
There are a number of MOOCs that may fit the bill allowing you to slowly gather the knowledge without sacrificing too much time and focus on a day job to keep you going. I feel they are also great value for money for what you get. Some of them are from very reputable names if that is important. [7][8].
Since you have a B.Sc you can do the Masters level but there are also Bachelors level courses. [9]
Indeed! I am sure I missed quite a few high speed systems.
India is in the shape of a diamond, where the most populous cities would be at the four points of the diamond aligned North-South. A high speed train network that would cover Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai together as a fully connected graph will probably have the highest volume of traffic. [1]
A trip from Trivandrum, Kerala or Kanya Kumari, Tamil Nadu in the South of India to the stations in Assam or Arunachal Pradesh in the North East of India would be some of the longest trips that you can take.
India has also some of the most beautiful railway lines in the world with switchbacks connecting the plains to the hill stations. [2]
Also some of the most expensive train rides. [3]
Of course there's air travel for the time conscious but the trains are for the adventurous travelers.
BTW, One of the most interesting stays I had in the US was at the Chattanooga Choo Choo in Chattanooga, TN. [4]
The Indian Railways is definitely an interesting organization.
Doing a cursory glance at a Wikipedia entry, some of the stats:
1. Established in 1832
2. 3rd largest railway network in the world
3. 8th largest employer in the world.
I was hoping to see something about the actual Rail Track details but this is more of a civil engineering specs for building construction.
I am curious about when and how Indian Railways will incorporate high speed rail such as the French TGV, Japanese Shinkansen or Chinese CRH.
On a visit to China in 2017 and taking a short trip in the Chinese CRH, I heard stats about 2,000 high speed trains a day. It was an interesting experience traveling at speeds greater than 300 kmh and not feeling a thing.
Of course I am curious about when the USA will incorporate the same.
The character of Cameron Howe resonated with me greatly.
What a fantastic show.