Conversation with BioMors
(21:31:12) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: well I've come across a rather interesting situation at MIT
(21:31:57) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: (if you're there / not busy of course)
(21:32:56) BioMors: what is that?
(21:33:15) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I'm finding them to be lacking
(21:33:16) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: heh'
(21:33:24) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: the professor and graduate students
(21:33:24) BioMors: oh?
(21:33:36) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: yeah, the tool chain has been nothing but crappy
(21:33:42) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I'm always fighting it
(21:33:52) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: they don't even have a debugger
(21:34:15) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: they're making some benchmark suite because they think that other ones aren't good enough... yet I seem to find things that suck about theirs on a daily basis
(21:34:39) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and this is 2 years after I met the professor, still nothing in silicon :-p
(21:35:01) BioMors: yeah
(21:35:08) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and many of the people there seem lazy / don't know what's going on
(21:35:13) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and the documentation is always hard to find and conflicting
(21:35:48) BioMors: yeah
(21:35:49) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I suppose that I was naive to think that any American [public] institution would meet basic standards? :-p
(21:35:49) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: heh'
(21:36:00) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: (sort of public, not really since MIT is private??)
(21:36:22) BioMors: yeah... they probably just all have 'better' things to do
(21:36:28) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: right
(21:36:29) BioMors: busy with rediculous loads of homework perhaps
(21:36:52) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: the one guy who helps me with the benchmark thing (he wrote it) always has away messages about his favorite sports teams and shit
(21:37:09) BioMors: hah
(21:37:11) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: "watching the angels baby!"
(21:37:12) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: :-p
(21:37:28) BioMors: doesn't sound promising
(21:37:28) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and his screen name is "uclacppboy"... how does that make sense??
(21:37:39) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: yeah I know and now I'm roped into this :-p no way out
(21:37:50) BioMors: yeah?
(21:38:03) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: the project actually looks a lot easier than I thought it would be
(21:38:03) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: but
(21:38:18) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: the tools and team look like a big obstacle
(21:40:14) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I got the pipeline working at home with my own test rigs
(21:40:17) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: including the time to write those tests
(21:40:21) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: in about 2 hours I'd say
(21:40:42) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: it has been at least 2 days all day trying to get that just to work under their
(21:40:44) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: setup
(21:40:50) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: just copy+pasting and changing minor things
(21:40:53) BioMors: yeah
(21:40:59) BioMors: sounds annoying
(21:41:15) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and now I'm trying to write the SCALE implementation which is what actually matters, and I'm hitting all kinds of bugs in their code
(21:41:21) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and design problems with their XBS thing
(21:41:25) BioMors: all the students being idiots, and the teachers apparently not terribly interested in their research
(21:41:29) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: heh'
(21:41:32) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: well it's the good old
(21:41:36) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: grant cycle
(21:41:51) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: they just need to do the bare minimum to demonstrate that the ideas (which are very good) work
(21:41:53) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: to get to the next grant
(21:41:55) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and then start over
(21:42:01) BioMors: I see
(21:42:06) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and I guess eventually get a grant so big that they can develop something reasonable
(21:42:10) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: at least that's my theory :-p
(21:43:21) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I'm pretty close to asking to just drop their whole bullshit XBS thing and write my own
(21:43:32) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: man would that burn them, but really it would take a shorter period of time
(21:43:32) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: heh'
(21:43:35) BioMors: do you think they'd be okay with that?
(21:43:46) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: it's not like I get a whole lot of support from the "mentor" guy anyway (professor)
(21:43:51) BioMors: yeah
(21:43:51) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I basically do it all on my own
(21:43:57) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: he'll probably get his name on my paper though
(21:44:00) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: :-p
(21:44:40) BioMors: well, if it'd save time I'm sure it's worth it
(21:44:47) BioMors: and he won't get to feel like he helped
(21:44:55) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: but yeah getting excuses like "Oh yeah that's a known problem I'd have to go through all the code and change it so I've been putting that off..." after an hour of debugging from a place like MIT just doesn't cut it
(21:44:56) BioMors: though he may take credit for it
(21:45:36) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: (debugging by bringing the code over to my own test rigs on my machine that I wrote since they don't have debuggers)
(21:45:56) BioMors: that's pretty bad
(21:45:59) BioMors: probably one of their problems
(21:46:06) BioMors: why they don't debug on their own
(21:46:18) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: yeah it's stupid
(21:46:23) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I'm supposed to implement the
(21:46:27) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: OpenGL ES pipeline
(21:46:30) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and all that they seem to have written
(21:46:32) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: for SCALE
(21:46:38) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: are fucking addition problems
(21:46:38) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: haha
(21:46:43) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: so they didn't need a debugger for that
(21:46:45) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: obviously
(21:46:53) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: but this is a few orders of magnitude more complex...
(21:47:01) BioMors: yeah
(21:47:26) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: but why spend the time writing a debugger when you can make it to the next grant cycle and politely ignore the lack of debug capabilities in your grant proposal paper? :-p
(21:47:36) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: the time of some 16 year old high school student isn't a high priority :-p
(21:47:53) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: (they didn't say any of this, but I'm inferring it as quite probable)
(21:48:00) BioMors: yeah
(21:48:05) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: anyway I just had to rant about it heh'
(21:48:13) BioMors: no problem
(21:48:23) BioMors: you should probably ask to just write the whole thing
(21:48:30) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: still no debugger though
(21:48:33) BioMors: couldn't hurt to ask, and it might inform them better of their problems
(21:48:43) BioMors: you haev debuggers though, right?
(21:48:53) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: at home, those only work for the reference implementations though
(21:49:03) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: when I am writing the actual
(21:49:04) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: SCALE code
(21:49:08) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: there's no alternative
(21:49:18) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and the crazy thing is that they're running on a SIMULATOR
(21:49:25) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: isn't the point of a SIMULATOR to make debugging a piece of cake??
(21:50:24) BioMors: could you write the debugger?
(21:50:28) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I tried that
(21:50:48) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: the problem always comes in that
1. I suck with Linux
2. They're running on a Simulator that I don't have a clue about
(21:51:34) BioMors: yeah
(21:52:16) BioMors: I would just tell them that I can't do ti without the debugger, and for me to learn how to write a debugger, it would be just as hard as the project itself- suggesting that I do that instead if they can't write the debugger
(21:52:50) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I can't write a debugger instead because
(21:52:55) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: my paper isn't on that
(21:52:56) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: heh'
(21:52:59) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: this is for the ASR program
(21:53:02) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: that's why I'm roped in
(21:53:06) BioMors: ASR?
(21:53:12) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: Authentic Science Research
(21:53:15) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: a class at High School
(21:53:31) BioMors: Can you change your paper topic?
(21:53:43) BioMors: or inform your teacher that there's a problem with MIT
(21:53:57) BioMors: i.e. that they're incompetant
(21:54:57) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: no paper named "Debuggers for the SCALE Processor" is going to win the scholarship or be worth writing heh'
(21:55:05) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: all that I can do is tough it out and hope that they write one
(21:55:11) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: but with their sluggish pace it would never be done in time
(21:55:22) BioMors: yeah
(21:55:27) BioMors: how big is the scholarship?
(21:55:40) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: I think that it's a full scholarship
(21:56:56) BioMors: to where? MIT?
(21:57:23) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: anywhere methinks
(21:57:48) BioMors: hmm... you might want to check on that- make sure it's worth it
(21:58:06) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: it's also great to have a letter of recommendation from a professor [at MIT]
(21:58:08) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: for any college
(21:58:12) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: pretty much makes any lesser college a shoein
(21:58:13) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: heh'
(21:58:26) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: and to have a project already done at MIT
(21:58:29) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: gives me pretty good chances
(21:58:31) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: at getting in
(21:58:36) BioMors: definitely
(21:58:50) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: these guys definetally don't qualify as programmers in my book though
(21:58:54) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: they're all gone by 7 or 8
(21:58:59) aGaBoOgAmOnGeR: actually earlier I think
(21:59:30) BioMors: yeah