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Comment by Agentlien

This reminds me of the story one of my university teachers used to introduce himself. He was the most brilliant educator I've had, really passionate about making sure people could actually follow and so humble. The course was called "Digital and Computer Technology" and it was a first year course teaching you to build a CPU starting from logic gates and then program it with assembly.

He said that when he had recently graduated and just moved from Norway to Sweden his first job here was as a technician for the local railway. One of his first assignments was a call where the computer controlling all the track switches had stopped working. Luckily there was a backup, but they needed him to fix it immediately.

He arrived, took a look at the computer and its backup running next to it. He started out by measuring voltages on both, comparing to see what the difference was. After a while some men in suits came in and asked how things were going. He said it was all good, they said it wasn't because now all trains had stopped. Apparently, he had short circuited the backup.

"And that's when I decided to go for a theoretical career!" My teacher happily concluded. The classroom was left in a stunned silence.

parent Agentlien 4 years ago

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