Computer programmers' habits in electronics

Ignoramus10397 · 2005-12-20T22:53:16+00:00

A newbie question...As a computer programmer, I am used to programming without drawing"design diagrams", "flow charts" and other bullshit. I just startcoding and try to make sure that I have some working prototype most ofthe time, and that I do things nicely. Usually things work out okayand programs do their job quietly, as intended.Not doing too much "design" also helps when the purpose of the programis not quite known from the beginning, as it usually happens. I find it very difficult to change this mindset and do any sort ofdiagram drawings or some such when it comes to electrics orelectronics. For example, I put together a pretty intricate phaseconverter in the last month, for instance, with two motors, some turnon logic, blah blah. That seemed to work. What I am worried about is that if I try to do something involving morethan say 20 wires, I would run into a wall and that electronics is notthe same as computer programming. So, I am curious if anyone can relate and tell me either just howmandatory drawing is, and how to get accustomed to it, or how theymake things without detailed plans.i

Dec 20, 2005 146 Replies

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John Larkin 20 years ago

I like assembly too. My comment/code ratio is about 3:1, and I include the occasional soliloquy, math derivation, protocol description, and ascii-art diagram. I saw some Windows source code a while back: a simple API wound up being a score of source files, many doing nothing but passing stuff off to others under assumed names. Each did have the Microsoft-mandatory comment header. Under "Description of function:" people had filled in useful things like "what it says."

John

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Keith Williams 20 years ago

I guess that's why I prefer assmebler, PL/I, or VHDL. Assembler forces comments to be able to figure out what you did next week. The others are verbose enough to get by with fewer comments (a high-level diagram would be nice). C/C++ are unreadable, IMO.

A former manager (a DOS/MVS developer in a former life) had the term "xenocryptophobia" on a plague above his desk. I thought it appropriate. It rubbed off.

Keith

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Keith Williams 20 years ago

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design

I do the same. The low-level drivers have ASCII art register definitions in the headers and a long description of exactly what the module is supposed to do, with all parameters and returns specified. I also use running comments to describe the results of each step and where it's all heading.

Why am I not surprised. "If it was hard to write it _should_ be hard to understand."

Keith

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