So, Gepetto--you know when it hits a bug because its nose grows? ;)
I like coding because it occupies my complete attention in a way that very few other things do. Designing electronics is the same way, but I don't get to do so much of that these days. :(
Cheers,
Phil Hobbs
This is called "Flow":
-- Frank Buss, fb@frank-buss.de http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
On a sunny day (Sat, 06 Dec 2008 05:49:30 -0800) it happened JosephKK wrote in :
tested in the past.
'hardware bloat'.
That is true. But a 30 years ago I once calculated how many MB I would need for video recording and processing. Of course in that time there was no mpeg2 encoding or the like. So, uncompressed. That needed giga bytes, and huge speeds.
Mpeg2 and H264, DivX, mp3, wma, etc etc are all software that make nice use of high processor power, lots of memory, and recording on large hard disks.
So, that is not really 'bloat'. In fact critical parts of the codecs are often written in asm for speed. It is a bit silly to say it all did not advance, just more bloat. Audio, and lately video processing, and now also in HD, is one of the great things that the home PC lets us do, can do, all because of the millions of transistors.
Not to mention the chips in the cameras, and the megapixel sensors. That is in fact a dream come true, one I had 30 years ago. To call it 'bloat' is an insult to the geniuses who developed those systems. But indeed in other areas where stuff is just piled up, and any ape can play programmer by writing in some super set of some high language, code efficiency is lost. But those systems sell, the manager has no clue, but wants something, and sure the sales person will sell him the package that he makes most profit on. Gigabytes of weird stuff. Mentioning (if the sales person knew at all) that the same could be done in
1000 lines of C, is not something that would support his living. I often see those adds, for yet an other business solution...... using words I do not even know, solutions for problems that do not exist, or at least could be solved very simply.... But those systems sell. Vista, now it backfired, so now MS knows where to stop with the crap, but they will try again. Politics will take more and more control of the Internet, until you can only go online with your ID card... The Aussies now are banning prepaid cellphones, you have to ID yourself. The state listening in on everything, storing everything for as long as the system keeps working, hundreds of years if must be. Data bloat. Hey, 'data bloat', the new paradigm :-)On a sunny day (Sat, 06 Dec 2008 08:48:36 -0500) it happened Spehro Pefhany wrote in :
Found it, about 200$ for a NS-DAC10.
Thank you, will look into the other models.
"Fun" and "really have to think" are both danger flags. It means the language is being used as a toy, not a tool.
Subscripts, with bounds checking, are a much tighter form of pointer.
Do tell. Even Microsoft has trouble with that.
I can manage the things I set out to do. I'm sure you can, too. But there are armies of programmers who can't. Existing tools are just too flexible and too dangerous for the average programmer. And note that half of all programmers are *worse* than average.
C is an antique, a bizarre antique, designed for people and constraints and applications that no longer exist.
The language doesn't matter if you truly know what you're doing. When I program in C, or in Basic, I do it in the style of assembly, which is how I think. It's not hard for an engineer who is designing the hardware to concurrently write good, tight, bug-free embedded code. It's the bigger programs, written by full-time programmers, that are the disasters. They need a new language and a new discipline.
John
Designing electronics.
If he's in it for the process, what's wrong will be the product. The majority of big programming projects fail. Most delivered software has many bugs. The majority of uP-based products have insane human interfaces.
John
On a sunny day (Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:56:04 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :
C is the only language that is portable to almost every processor. It is close to the hardware, and was developed to write drivers, to make writing drivers easier. It is at a high enough level, especially when you count all the available libraries and tools, to do very sophisticated programming.
After having coded the same applications again and again in asm for different micros, for me the language *does* matter.
No 'goto' in C for me (but one could). Asm is all jumps...
Well, this is the day we disagree it seems. I seems to me it is *as hard* for the hardware man to write bug free code, as it is for any programmer.
All you need is love love, love is all you need. Beatles.
Our first family toaster was the kind where you had to open the sides "just so". Then the slices would flip. If you did it wrong and wedged it smoke would come out. It had no thermostat. The tool you used to determine slice tan was on your wrist and said Timex or something on there :-)
Braun used to be good. But we found their coffee makers didn't last more than 1-1/2 years lately. So why spend extra for a name brand anymore?
Until shortly after the warranty expiration date ...
From an engineer's POV this thing isn't designed right IMHO. But supposedly makes good coffee. Died on its first run :-(
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Hmm, tons of ads, even in the archives. But the tunes are cool and now I know what Wompers Fried Sausages are :-)
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
There is a big difference between the projects for 2-3 developers and the projects for 20-30 developers. In the later, there is no such single person who has good answers for all technical questions. The overhead increases like a square of the number of people involved. The law of the big numbers comes into play also.
Have you seen like the ants are building the ant hill? Many ants are pulling a straw in one general direction however each ant is pulling a straw in the direction of his own.
No. This is what the market demands. Customers don't want to pay x10 amount of money and wait for x3 of time for the code to be completely free of bugs.
BASIC, Java, C# and ADA are there since quite long ago. It is a mistake to think that a non-technical problem can be cured by technical means.
...Until you get hungry or thirsty.
Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant
even
atemperature,
MANY years ago I designed a chip that used a combination of temperature and color reflection to do toast "just right" ;-)
My experience, over these many years, is that "electronics" per se is not bad, just that anything controlled by a uP can't be trusted... unless an analog guy supervised the algorithm development ;-)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine Sometimes I even put it in the food
even
My kettle, cone, and pot have been in daily use for about 15 years and are holding up fine.
The guts of a coffee maker, a toaster, or a stove - temperature extremes, steam, crumbs, oil - are horrendous environments for cheap electronics.
John
On a sunny day (Sat, 06 Dec 2008 11:12:12 -0600) it happened Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote in :
Agreed, I have seen that.
Then you still need love.
But when it's really bad and the propane truck can't get through anymore you'd be back to granola bars until depleted. I can go into the woods and cut off some dead wood, then cook :-)
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Spelling was wrong, probably it's on this page:
I got a 15 year old electric Melitta coffee maker from my parents when heading out to the university. A plain plastic version, nothing fancy. It kept running the whole time, and then some. At least back then this was a great brand. Most of the new stuff from other "name brands" is in rather sorry state right out of the box.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Absolutamente. If you look real hard you can still get such cars but it won't be a US model. Unless they took an Asian design under license like GM/Geo used to do. And not all Japanese cars are really imports, for example my wife's Toyota was built in Fremont, CA.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Mine do.
It can. But there needs to be a manager who enforces diligent use of such technical means. For example, proper version control. Plus the use of a word processor by SW designers. They may hate it but unless they do it'll quickly end up in a chaos. In my line of work agencies such as FDA or FAA mandate that proper design history is kept. If you don't, your product will not be granted permission to market.
Or to say it with the words of the R&D chief at my first employer: "If you didn't document it then it didn't happen." He is a 12-year army veteran and those guys know.
[...]-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
microcontrollers:
run
even
It used to not be that way, back when more engineers knew about analog. For example, one classic mistake I find in my consulting practice is the use of too high impedances in low-energy sensing circuits. A little moisture, a little dirt, and it'll be on the fritz. The right way is to use low impedances and then pulse-measure. But it seems universities don't teach that stuff anymore.
Yesterday a friend told me a sad story: They have a double oven, friggin expensive, IIRC it's a GE. The controller up top is, unfortunately, electronic and expensive, In ten years the third one has died so now they consider this oven a total loss. That is pathetic.
Our double oven is over 35 years old. When it dies I will go to great lengths to find a replacement that is controlled via bi-metal thermostat switches. I don't want any PWM or whatever in there. Just relays, bi-metal and switches.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
microcontrollers:
run
even
atemperature,
... _and_ unless it's mask-programmed. Flash retention years in hot environments can easily drop to single digits.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Yeah, but you also understand and design hardware so that it becomes part of the "flow". The number of SW guys I know who can really do that is less than 10.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
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