Ask HN:What was the one hack which took most time?

2 points by samikc ↗ HN
We have all been through that one hack which took so much time. But feels great when it's done. It has that aha moment to it.

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Not really a web based hack but writing the functions to detect and decode a valid stream of manchester encoded data over a 433MHz link on a PIC microprocessor too me an age, mainly because I designed it to detect the baud rate from within the received data stream. The most irritating part about it all is that the encode part of the system is like 5 lines of code that took two minutes to write. The decode however is several timers, interrupts and about 5 weekends of work.

It works well enough but it's on breadboard so will never be perfect.