If you ask me, “When is the best in Sweden?”. I don’t think I can answer that. It is my 75th day in Göteborg and temperature is decreasing so quickly. I can still remember that last September the temperature was around 15-20 degree Celcius and now less than 5. And good news is, it won’t get any better until April.
However, no time for blabbing and regret this. Even for my first exam in Chalmers. It was quite a mixed-bag for me, with two courses all about Fault Tolerant Computer Systems and Self Stabilizing Algorithm. The first one was good but the latter…mmmm…I don’t know. The course was Computer Networks, but we had three examiners or lecturers and the focus on the course was all about how to design a self-stabilizing distributed systems. Why self-stabilizing? It grants you an independent system which can be started in any arbitrary-condition and will eventually recover to its desireable state in finite step executions. How? By communicating with their neighbours. It is a distributed systems! Stop! I’m not gonna continue this…
And what was fault-tolerant thing all about? Hmmmm…Two words, damn good! The idea is when you are working on something which potentially has a very big impact and severe risks when failed, you don’t want it to be failed. Use self-stabilizing then! No, we’re talking about serious stuff for a sake of gazillion bucks and human lifes. We’re talking about space shuttle, big aircraft, etc. Those are example of stuffs which you have to put zero tolerate on errors.
This course is all about putting spare system here and there, adding some redundancy and hazard analysis while at the same time, inviting several guest lecturers from the the best men in the field. One of them was the designer of ESA Arianne 5 computer system. We took several pictures and my God, it was real thing, I got my hand on that super familiar computer featured in one of the world most expensive fireworks.
Well, in 1996, Europe Space Agency or ESA, was ready to launch their new rocket, Arianne 5. Some components were new, some of them were derived from previous Arianne 4. Everything seems good when after launch, different arc direction when it was leaving earth, brought an overflow into the computer system, triggering self-destruct mode as its final resolve. And the infamous computer, was brought to my class. And since then, Arianne 5 has been working really great. From 75 rockets launched, only the first failed on a catastrophic failure.
It is great to know that I still have ‘WOW’ feeling. I’m easily impressed with such thing, yet I’m just wanting and hoping to stand at that level sometimes in the future. So, no hibernating for sure. Lot of ladder steps need to be taken, effort is a function within time so, give your best effort in this finite time of your life. Make great stuffs for the sake of billion people on earth, will you?