Devlog #14

Since then, most of my work has been getting DDSim ready for other people to use.

First I cleaned up the controls. Some sliders and number boxes let you pick values that made the solver fail, which just showed up as a red error. I went through the diode, the MOS capacitor, the transistor and the draw-your-own device and found the range where each setting actually works. The sliders now stay inside those ranges, so a beginner can’t break things by accident.

Then I cleaned up the code. I deleted about 2,400 lines of comments that just repeated what the code already said and kept the ones that explain something nessessary.

Next came the writing. The site has about 40 short articles that explain the physics, and a lot of them sounded stiff, so I rewrote all of them. I did the same for the project docs, and on the way I found a few places where the docs no longer matched what the code does, so I fixed those too.

Now I’m working on putting it online. I picked Fly.io to host it, and I’m hoping to get a free custom name. Since anyone will be able to use it, I’m adding some safety limits first. Only a couple of solves can run at the same time, old results get cleared out after a while, and a solve that runs too long gets stopped with a message explaining why. I tested each limit by breaking it on purpose to make sure the test catches it.

It isn’t live yet, but it’s close!

[lazy pic, i dont wanna open server again :( ]