u/thesaxoffender

The traditional way to teach a lot of aerospace engineering is to start small and build up to complicated models.

This works to teach theory but it’s off putting for some and doesn’t really reflect how we do real aircraft design.

So I’m modifying my website (aircraftflightmechanics.com) to do it the other way around.

I’ve built a linear and nonlinear 6DoF aircraft sim that you can perturb, compare, design controllers.

My intent is to build out modules that explain what each bit of the model is for and how it works.

Things like “ok, so we need to understand translation and rotation - let’s do translation first because it’s easier with Newtons Second Law, and then we’ll do rotation and understand what on earth the physical meaning of inertias are (and why they’re related to eigenvalues)”

Have a play with the sim - let me know what you think. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but the hard part is complete.

I genuinely think this is useful. I have nothing to gain from making this other than I enjoy it and I think we teach things awkwardly. If this falls afoul of “self promotion”, then that’s a shame. Not least of all because this is not my job any more nor do I profit in any way from this.

I wrote two connected pieces this weekend, and they’re meant to be read in this order:

1. https://www.aeronauty.com/writing/i-dont-like-data-entry

2. https://www.aeronauty.com/writing/the-brain-that-was-a-tax

Yes, this is a link to my writing elsewhere. It's because the story is richer than being text in a box (almost like that's the *whole* message of my first one.)

The first is about work, software, and a problem I’ve apparently been circling for fifteen years: why data entry feels so uniquely awful, and why “just enter the data later” is often a broken system disguised as a reasonable request.

The second is the personal backstory: I started Adderall last week after my wife suspected for many years that I had ADHD, and it’s making me reinterpret a lot of my adult life.

Yes, these link to my personal website, but I have no ads, no monetization, no affiliate links, and nothing for sale. I lose money hosting it. It’s just a better format for telling a connected story than trying to cram both pieces into Reddit. If the mods can see this and ban me for "advertising" like they did on r/ADHD then...well...mods be mods.

I’m still very early in this, so I’m not making any grand pronouncement. But the strangest part so far is not just “I can focus better.” It’s realizing how many things I thought were character flaws may have been coping mechanisms, workarounds, or missing infrastructure.

Has anyone else been diagnosed or medicated later in life and had that strange “oh, wait, this explains the last few decades” feeling?

I wrote two connected pieces this weekend. They’re meant to be read together, and the engineering one should be read first:

1. https://www.aeronauty.com/writing/i-dont-like-data-entry

2. https://www.aeronauty.com/writing/the-brain-that-was-a-tax

The first is about data entry, software design, and why I think “users won’t enter the data” is often a sign that the system has put the capture step in the wrong place.

The second is the personal backstory: I started Adderall last week after my wife suspected for many years that I had ADHD, and medication made me realize why this class of problem has bothered me for so long.

Yes, these go to my personal website, but there are no ads, no newsletter funnel, and nothing for sale there. I lose money hosting it. It’s just a better way to tell the story, and the two pieces are interrelated rather than separate link drops.

The engineering piece does eventually connect to a niche product I’m building for my company, but this isn’t a sales pitch. I don’t think this subreddit is the market for it. The interesting part is that, post-meds, I suddenly saw that I’d been trying to solve the same “humans should not be forced to repeatedly translate reality into database-shaped forms” problem for most of my career.

Curious if other ADHD programmers have had this experience: you start treatment, and suddenly old projects or obsessions snap into focus as one coherent theme.