Where is a good (recent) source of data for 8/16/32 bit mircocontroller use by industry? Where are we headed? What do tell someone wanting to go into electrical engineering the best direction to focus on?
- posted
15 years ago
Where is a good (recent) source of data for 8/16/32 bit mircocontroller use by industry? Where are we headed? What do tell someone wanting to go into electrical engineering the best direction to focus on?
Focus on the ideas, not the individual implementations.
As a working engineer, you should be able to have trivial code running on a new-to-you processor (with decent tools) within 24 hours of picking it up, and have it provisionally accomplishing real parts of your application within a week.
Of course being _really good_ at applying a particular micro may take months to years, but that's the role of work (or avocational) experience, not what you are supposed to be primarily focused on in school.
Try telling that to recruiters. They seem to think that anything other than an exact match is a resume destined for the round receptacle
tim
I did... from the side of the outfit paying them ;-)
Then they can't have been listening
tim
If you know how to program then device/language is irrelevant. I learned asm on many different micros from risc to full instruction sets. Then I did C and C++, now there are not many commercial languages I have not touched. It's rare that I touch hardware these days, but when I do I choose the device that is best suited to the job.
I wouldn't say it's irrelevant - but it's not of make-or-break importance in most circumstances.
The reason it isn't irrelevant is that languages and architectures do influence approaches to problems - there's not only a different syntax and different instructions, there's also a different style of doing things. That's particularly of note when you go between programming models based on actual (or historic) hardware architectures, and the more abstract or invented programming models underlying object- oriented techniques.
Or to take another example - if you are studying a foreign (human) language, you end up picking up interesting hints from the atypical constructs native speakers of that language may slip in when speaking your native language.
The selection of processors with a given "endianess" falls into the language example also. Spending a lot of years on a little endian processor for instance makes a transition to a big-endian processor rather confusing, and vice versa of course. But again, it's not a show stopper.
Scott
The underlying arguments are older than time (about particular skills vs. the kind of person who will excel at anything but doesn't have an exact skill match at the time of hire).
I don't interview much these days. There is just too much nonsense. Recent examples:
a)One recruiter was trying to get me an interview for a certain position with a certain company. I was advised to apply online. I did. I promptly received an e-mail that my salary requirements were out of line (despite prior conversations with the recruiter about this topic). I didn't want to receive future e-mails from the company, so I asked to be removed from their database. I was advised that they couldn't do that, as they were a government contractor and had to keep accurate statistics. (My objection: I wasn't advised when I supplied information online that it would be retained indefinitely and that I couldn't remove the information.)
b)Recruiters routinely pressure candidates to accept a job or go further in the process (regardless of whether the candidate feels there is a good fit), because this is how the recruiter makes his living.
c)Recruiters get upset when the candidate turns down a job offer, regardless of the reason.
d)Candidates get pressured to travel substantial distances for interviews when a phone conversation with the hiring manager would be easier and cheaper.
e)Companies routinely interview candidates that they aren't really interested in hiring (wasting the candidate's time).
f)HR departments tend to be "keyword focused", i.e. the topic of this thread.
g)And so on ...
The Lizard
Most microcontroller applications are not done in assembly anymore, so IMO the core itself is much less relevant these days than the peripherals. If the peripherals match the application, then the core itself is much less of an issue. An 8-bit MCU with a perfect match of peripherals for a specific application would be faster than a 32-bit MCU with a poor peripheral fit. Any embedded programmer must be able to get the peripherals going. What I have seen is that people who have experience of only simple peripherals, flounder when they have to get a more flexible peripheral going.
Regards Anton Erasmus
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A good point. In my major days in the industry there were very few peripherals available, and the need generated the hardware. In some ways this was easier, since you designed for the abilities you needed. In other ways it was a major distraction.
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