Have others been alarmed by the vitriol and hyperbole in some of the threads here? I am brand new here, and generally avoid online forums, although I used to participate in a couple engineering forums that were usually collegial. In a thread on possible unintended acceleration (from brake pedal application) the OP was called a troll, but he quite clearly is not one. I "parachuted" into the discussion, one poster claimed. I was castigated for believing that computers (including microcontrollers), firmware, and software can fail. Some accused me of being fearful of computers (despite nothing that I said would indicate that). (I've built some, programmed many, and taught many (500-1000) industrial workers to work with PLCs and their input and output devices. I built a plug-in hybrid microcar that goes 10 miles per kilowatt hour -- child's play as compared to the industrial work, with less than two pages of code, as compared to 1000's)
A moderator claimed that there was not a gender-biased edge to the discussion, even though there were several references like "Hell hath no fury..." etc.
However, Tronguy offered a few remarkably articulate and well-informed posts that were, in my view, word perfect and entirely true regarding the nature of hardware and software, (and corporate scapegoating and shirking) with which we seem to have similar experience. ... his more extensive than mine, I think. But his posts were met with largely baseless conjecture, regarding the impossibility of failure modes. I am thankful for his posts, and would have said so in that thread, but was locked out of making any response.
Thank you Tronguy. There may be other posts on this site by people who actually know how stuff works on... I just haven't seen many that go beyond superficiality and strongly expressed opinions without any data backup. Your posts in that thread were right on the money... every single word.
A moderator claimed that there was not a gender-biased edge to the discussion, even though there were several references like "Hell hath no fury..." etc.
However, Tronguy offered a few remarkably articulate and well-informed posts that were, in my view, word perfect and entirely true regarding the nature of hardware and software, (and corporate scapegoating and shirking) with which we seem to have similar experience. ... his more extensive than mine, I think. But his posts were met with largely baseless conjecture, regarding the impossibility of failure modes. I am thankful for his posts, and would have said so in that thread, but was locked out of making any response.
Thank you Tronguy. There may be other posts on this site by people who actually know how stuff works on... I just haven't seen many that go beyond superficiality and strongly expressed opinions without any data backup. Your posts in that thread were right on the money... every single word.
