Julia Evans spoke with us about how computers compute. We discussed number representation including floating point as well as Julia’s extensive collection of ‘zines and comics.

Julia’s zines about debugging, managers, Linux commands, and more are available on WizardZines.com. If you want samples, check out the comics section. Also, the experiments (aka playgrounds) are great additions to the zines (and fun on their own), letting you explore without changing your own DNS or removing all the files from your root directory. If you want to check out numbers, look at memory-spy (or from other sites like https://float.exposed/ and https://integer.exposed/)

Julia also has a detailed blog on jvns.ca and active github repositories. She was on Embedded 141: Malevolent and Trying to Trick You.

Sponsorship of this episode by Volta Labs, an MIT spin-off that is developing a novel lab automation platform for genome sequencing. We raised $20 million as part of our Series-A funding and are hiring for several roles related to embedded software. All roles are full-time, 100% onsite in Boston, MA, and require the ability to thrive in an early-stage startup.

• Senior Firmware Engineer - Design/develop/debug firmware for our instrument platform. Requires strong experience with RTOS, C/C++, ARM-based microcontrollers

• Tech Lead, Instrument Software - Lead design/development of instrument control software. Requires prior experience as a tech lead and strong experience programming control systems in Python on Linux.

• Tech Lead, Electrical and Embedded Systems - Lead design/development of electrical subsystems and firmware. Prior experience as a tech lead, strong experience with electrical design / bring-up, and integration between firmware and electromechanical systems.

Transcript