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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

Philip Greenspun is a highly experienced pilot:

https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/milestones

I too have hundreds of flights and am also a programmer, but I would not assume having both skills would make you anything more then an armchair quarterback. If you have not written code that runs planes, what knowledge are you basing your idea off of. IMO.

i too also play games, but i wouldn't assume to tell a game developer how to write their code.

I agree - being a pilot and a programmer is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for being able to diagnose and solve an issue in a system as complex as a modern airliner. In fact I don't think any individual is capable of doing so on their own; maybe the sole exception being someone like the engineering lead of avionics for the 737 Max, who is probably not a pilot, and probably only a programmer in so far as it was a component of their engineering education.

Honest question, is his experience in small aircraft applicable at all to jetliners? How much carryover, beyond core theory of flight dynamics, is there from piloting a single prop to an Airbus or even a regional jet?

He part owns a Pilatus PC-12, which is pretty much a single engine regional jet. It isn't your grandfather's Cessna.

Turboprop

He has first officer experience flying a CL-65 Canadair Regional Jet.

His resume includes:

- FAA ATP AMEL and ASEL certificate with CL-65 SIC rating and Part 121 experience; CE-510S rating (single pilot, Cessna Mustang)

- Helicopter ATP

- single-engine seaplane rating at the commercial level

- FAA Flight Instructor certificate with airplane single-engine, airplane multi-engine, helicopter, instrument airplane, and instrument helicopter ratings

He has also worked as a commercial pilot for Delta/Comair. See https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/resume

He doesn't seem to be an experienced owner of a home outdoor thermometer though.

Or if he is, I need to know where he found one that goes to 452 degrees and why he even needs that much range. ;)

Digital thermometers usually have triple digits to be able to display numbers in the low 100's. I could see one of them failing in a weird way and displaying 452.

BBQ lid? Many have thermometers that go higher than this (say, 700F), and they're often outdoors.

The thermometer sensor and circuitry might be perfectly ok, still the 452 number might be a single digit gone bonkers in the panel, so that data being transmitted (maybe also recorded?) is ok while the readout is plain wrong. A human acting according data being shown there might react very differently from someone reading the temperatures log. Sometimes software problems can be awfully subtle.

How else would you know there is a wildfire outside?

I was as confused as the other commentators by this post until I realized that fixermark is thinking of analog thermometers with a physical dial, while we (and probably the author as well) are envisioning electronic thermometers with digital displays.

A pilot is not a programmer. A minor, but important distinction.

EDIT: Aaaand I'm an idiot. My bad.

Philip Greenspun is, in fact a programmer. He's probably best known in these circles for the quote "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."

It is possible to be both a pilot and a programmer.

This is referred to in the industry as a "Dr. McNinja scenario."

(... nobody refers to it as that ;) ).

https://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/

not only is he a programmer, but he has opinions on teaching programming.

Are you claiming Greenspun is not a programmer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArsDigita

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