Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[mendip_discovery]

Sometimes seemingly dumb choices have sound reasoning behind them. The longer my career, the slower I am to immediately question odd choices made by others more familiar with their industry.

After the SunnyD ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunnyD ) fun I still question the logic that the manufacturer's go through. I remember a product that sold less as they found that a higher price and less product made it taste better. They are experts in the placebo effect its just crazy.

Do you ever wonder how many tin foil hats you wear and is there sufficient air gap between the layers.

[IDEngineer]

Pringles are an exception as they come in a rigid container. If you tried this with regular potato chips it wouldn't work, you'd never get them to stack neatly enough to fill the volume and not move around and bash each other to crumbs.

Plus discarded chip bags aren't nearly as effective as Pringles cans at trapping the heads of cats, skunks, and other small animals.

/sarcasm

[Zeyneb]

Hi I'd like to file a complaint with reality.

Was just minding my own business when I got stung by a wasp while walking up the front stairs of our property.

Out of 10 I'd say its about a solid 8 on the pain threshold.

Oh that's unfortunate. Can you give a description of the suspect?

[Leeima]

When declining or cancelling anything on the internet, having to press "don't want" 3+ times....

That's ignoring the dishonesty, and predatory behaviour of moving the buttons around, actively making the cancel button less visible, changing the phrasing of the question "do you want to cancel?" to "do you want to stay?" or the single click to re-sign-up.

[bookaboo]

Finding a neat little display that would suit a quick project in the spares box..... but the manufacturer has no markings to indicate what their part number or chipset is. Guess they don't want me to ever use it or buy more from them.

There's a number printed right on the flex cable of the display itself. Is this it?

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804798112820.html

Unfortunately not, it  just must be a common flex cable, but thanks anyway good Sir!

[paulca]

Pringles are an exception as they come in a rigid container. If you tried this with regular potato chips it wouldn't work, you'd never get them to stack neatly enough to fill the volume and not move around and bash each other to crumbs.

Plus discarded chip bags aren't nearly as effective as Pringles cans at trapping the heads of cats, skunks, and other small animals.

/sarcasm

This is one of my pet peeves.  Humanity projecting humanity on creatures.  Small critters have always had a tough life, they always will.   Small critters life expectancy is tiny.  They have the most preditors and the most dangerous life.  Nature is perfectly happy letting them die on a whim, why do / should we care otherwise?  If it's not a crisp packet, it'll be a hungry sea gull.

It's like the debate about domestic cats being a threat to local bird wild life.  Boohoo.  I'm sure if you ask the birds would they prefer that all the humans moved out, the buildings removed and restored to their natural habbitat the birds would be saying "NO!  PLEASE NO!", because in that natrural woodland environment there are 100s of time MORE predators than in suberbia which has push most of the little birdies predators back into the little woodland that still exists.  Things like raptors, foxes and so on and so forth.  Most of the predatory threats to the little birdies do not come into suburbia so they get a nice safer environment and... the humans even put out tons and tons of food across an area.

Finally.  Nature it not stupid.  If it was not a better life for the birdies in suburbia, they would not be there.  They would move, leave, migrate, stop nesting, disappear.

[RJSV]

Pet peeve, ...hmmm:
   Turned on my RADIO today, crashing in bed before falling asleep.  It 'dropped out', went silent, at about 39 seconds in (to some innocent nighttime show).
   Turned 'RADIO'  back on, it said:
   "Comm Error: Report to Admin", (like, 3 times).

...radio show resumed, into commercial's break, and ran fine, until...53 seconds later, that commercial went dead, then 'squirked' a couple times, then said, (sigh),
   "Comm Err, Comm Err...Report to Admin"

Oh wait, that right:
   General merch. stores DON'T SELL radios, now...
(We have drop-outs, world-wide, now).

(sarcasm)

[james_s]

I have fond memories of shortwave listening when I was a kid but I can see why most of it is gone. Anyone can read/listen/watch globally over the internet now, there is little commercial value in shortwave, it's only fanatics driven to get their message out that bother.

[IDEngineer]

Yeah, the Internet is/has killed shortwave and amateur radio as hobbies. However, the latter both work when the nets are down... the ionosphere is still there waiting to be used! We still have some pretty high end ham radio equipment sitting around, and I know how to make an emergency antenna by stripping coax to the proper length....

[Infraviolet]

Regarding Post#3155, also those adverts disguised as download links were really nasty, big green buttons that said download and would appear on sites you were actually trying to download files from, except what the green buttons downloaded was adware. Note how I use the past-tense, NoScript has cured that problem for me, haven't such those horrible adverts in years now.

[james_s]

Yeah, the Internet is/has killed shortwave and amateur radio as hobbies. However, the latter both work when the nets are down... the ionosphere is still there waiting to be used! We still have some pretty high end ham radio equipment sitting around, and I know how to make an emergency antenna by stripping coax to the proper length....

Amateur radio is still alive and well, there's a lot more to it than just broadcasting information. I'm skeptical of its value in most emergency situations though, first responders have their own radio systems, and for everyone else setting up an ad hoc wireless network might have more value.

[AndyBeez]

Pet peeve: People who have, and can afford to buy, all of the fancy gear, but have absolutely zero idea of even the basic principles required to understand what happens when they switch it on.

"On the dial of my new EEVBlog 121GW meter there is a AmA setting. Why did they put this on there?"

[AndyBeez]

Thats the Ask Me Anything setting.. You put it there to ask it a question.

Sorta like google or amazon echo.

Why bother to understand first principles when there's a whole internet of people with less disposable income than you doing your thinking for you.

The Ask Me Anything button 

[paulca]

Code like this:
https://github.com/RobertoBenjami/stm32_graphics_display_drivers

1.  It seems that C isn't really his thing.  Instead he likes to program in "Pre-processor directives"
2.  It's trying to incorporate so much crap in one package it's insanely complex in just what exactly is a function, a macro for a function or a parameterised, ifdefed aliased a few times macro for a function.  Not even Eclipse could track it and gave up so none of the index references worked.
3.  It looks like at least part of it has been auto-converted from C++ to C.
4.  It insists on fiddling with the low level stuff conflicting with HAL stuff.
5.  After 3 hours I gave up.  Not even the SPI trace on the scope made any sense.  It seemed like it was reconfiguring the SPI clock rate repeatedly from high to low,  Some times it would send a command so fast it looked like a sinewave on a decent bit of zoom, the next time it would sent it pedestrianly slow. Other times it seemed to float all the data and clock pins and they would errupt in induced clock noise.  Possibly relating to point 4.
6.  The reason for the pet peeve is the anger I felt while trying to understand what the code is actually doing when it's all written in a bespoke custom macro language and nothing is what it seems.  The only way to actually work out what code path you'll be on is to follow it in a debugger.

Life is too short.  I'll modify the ili9431 driver instead.

A prime example, as ISR... everything is a macro.  Everything:

Code: [Select]

void DMAX_STREAMX_IRQHANDLER(LCD_DMA_TX)(void)
{
  if(DMAX_ISR(LCD_DMA_TX) & DMAX_ISR_TCIF(LCD_DMA_TX))
  {
    DMAX_IFCR(LCD_DMA_TX) = DMAX_IFCR_CTCIF(LCD_DMA_TX);
    DMAX_STREAMX(LCD_DMA_TX)->CR = 0;
    while(DMAX_STREAMX(LCD_DMA_TX)->CR & DMA_SxCR_EN);
    BITBAND_ACCESS(SPIX->CR2, SPI_CR2_TXDMAEN_Pos) = 0;
    while(BITBAND_ACCESS(SPIX->SR, SPI_SR_BSY_Pos));
    SPIX->CR1 &= ~SPI_CR1_SPE;
    LCD_IO_Delay(2 ^ LCD_SPI_SPD_WRITE);
    SPIX->CR1 |= SPI_CR1_SPE;

    if(LCD_IO_DmaTransferStatus == 1) /* last transfer end ? */
      LCD_CS_OFF;

    #ifndef osFeature_Semaphore
    /* no FreeRtos */
    LCD_IO_DmaTransferStatus = 0;
    #else
    /* FreeRtos */
    osSemaphoreRelease(spiDmaBinSemHandle);
    #endif // #else osFeature_Semaphore
  }
  else
    DMAX_IFCRALL_LCD_DMA_TX;
}


[RJSV]

   Google with 'latest' security assurance.
   "WE ENCRYPT YOUR ENTRIES"!

   Yeah cool, but while you spy on every last little morsel, of my keyboard pokes...to the millisecond it sometimes seems.
But also any other entity declaring themselves 'Safe and Secure with your personal data'.

   And don't worry about me...been fact-checked.

   Definition of 'CHECKED':
   To stop or block a thing from being or happening.

[Psi]

Here's what chatGPT says about electronics engineering pet peeves

[xrunner]

Here's what chatGPT says about electronics engineering pet peeves

Well thats me out of a job.

11. Electronic engineers using ChatGPT to get lists of electronic engineering pet peeves.

 

[AndyBeez]

12. Management who think they can do engineering

  Just saying

[IDEngineer]

13. The entire contents of the EEVblog thread "your-pet-peeve-technical-or-otherwise" since that is literally the reason for this thread.

Is this attempting to be an example of recursion?

[shapirus]

has dividing amps and watts by hours been mentioned yet?
(same goes for using kV and kW interchangeably.)

[SiliconWizard]

Point 9. is interestingly biased.

[srb1954]

12. Management and accountants who think they can do engineering

  Just saying

FTFY

[mendip_discovery]

Pet peeve: People who have, and can afford to buy, all of the fancy gear, but have absolutely zero idea of even the basic principles required to understand what happens when they switch it on.

"On the dial of my new EEVBlog 121GW meter there is a AmA setting. Why did they put this on there?"

I won't claim to know it all, yet I get to play with some nice kit. I also get to talk to some smart people. I did not start out with the desire to go into electronics, I just needed a job and started in a cal lab[1], now I run the lab even though I spend the least amount of time there. To the experienced hands I am a dunce, but I am trying to learn, one step at a time. [1] mech and elec lab so I have to deal with just more than electrical pixies.

I had a conversation with a 17025 auditor on the lack of first principle know how. He put some of it down to the starters in industry not being put in a lab with metrology grade stuff to learn the basics as an apprentice. These days all the kit goes out to a magic place where it gets a new label and a bit of paper so it can be used for another year. The wise old chap, though a grumpy person, is the best source of information but they have trained so many newbies who just jump ship once they get the better job and leave that grump to teach another hopeful that the wise old grump is just tired and does the bare minimum until he can retire.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Amateur radio is still alive and well, there's a lot more to it than just broadcasting information.

Broadcasting is specifically forbidden by the amateur radio rules in most countries.

[tom66]

You aren't allowed to entertain anyone either... 

What's the definition of entertainment?  Do they get a really bored, grumpy guy to listen to the broadcas... er, I mean, transmission, and see if he cracks a smile?