Programming for Electronics Engineers

[Guy Macon]

Recently cruised the Computers section of Borders Books. There were
precisely ZERO books on the hardware of computing, and thousands on
software. A shrink-wrapped set of "Microsoft .NET Foundation" took an
entire shelf section by itself, roughly 8000 pages, for a mere $240.

Makes me nostalgic for the days when mere mortals could write
programs.

This is the golden era of writing your own programs!

Here are three excellent languages for beginners:

http://www.powerbasic.com/products/pbcc/
http://www.forth.com/
http://www.python.org/doc/Intros.html

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

John Larkin wrote:




This is the golden era of writing your own programs!

Here are three excellent languages for beginners:

http://www.powerbasic.com/products/pbcc/
http://www.forth.com/
http://www.python.org/doc/Intros.html

It is less a problem writing your own software, more a
problem in also getting paid for it. Since every plummer
and every houseman can write software, it became rather
hard to communicate that your software took so long and
is to be that expensive.

Rene

 

[Jim Douglas]

You would be surprised how easy it is to still do, even with the .NET
foundations and 8000 pages. Although the tools have become more complicated
the same old "basic" language is there.

 

[Kryten]

I'm staggered that they bother to produce these massive books (and sets of
books) for colossal prices.

If I were them, I would slap all the documentation on DVD and give it away.

I guess they charge money so that only serious programmers leap that
barrier.

You've got to wonder if something is a good idea if it needs books that
size!

Well, you still can in the same way you can still make anything else.

It is just the scale of complexity has widened.

Individuals can still make some cool small projects, but not huge ones.

You could perhaps make a hang glider but not a stealth fighter.

Microsoft are big enough to do the colossal projects.
There's no way I want to spend the time needed to develop the software that
I have on my PC, or the PC itself.

I look for projects that are small enough to be done by me, yet big and
clever enough to be satisfying and fun.

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 13:52:59 GMT, "Kryten"

[snip]

Individuals can still make some cool small projects, but not huge ones.

[snip]

Yes, and No. It's been a few years since I was inside Intel. Back
then it was ONE MAN who was the principal architect of the uP's,
although there were lots of do-bee's hanging onto his shirttails.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Kryten]

Yes, and No. It's been a few years since I was inside Intel. Back
then it was ONE MAN who was the principal architect of the uP's,
although there were lots of do-bee's hanging onto his shirttails.

I agree there are people who are enormously productive.

However they are rare, as indicated by the ratio of do-bees to genius.


I'm not one of the mega-productive people, so I have to scale my projects to
suit. I've enjoyed my own pet project more than I would writing a compiler,
and the world has many of those already.


I do see some very impressive sized amateur projects on the web but most are
modest sized and perhaps just as much fun for less complexity.


I've seen inside ARM for example, and the fun creative design work is much
smaller than the non-fun tedious aspect of verifying, documenting, licensing
etc.


K.

 

[John Larkin]

This is the golden era of writing your own programs!

Here are three excellent languages for beginners:

http://www.powerbasic.com/products/pbcc/
http://www.forth.com/
http://www.python.org/doc/Intros.html

I do program in PowerBasic a lot. I mostly use the 3.5 DOS version,
which has nice graphics and lets me do direct hardware i/o and
peek/poke without hassle. It's blindingly fast, does useful megahertz
FOR loops.

I just did a little prog to talk in a binary protocol (inside TCP/IP)
to a Lantronix Xport ethernet gadget. I used the 32-bit PowerBasic
(Console Compiler) version. The TCP OPEN thing just works... it was
amazing... everything I needed to do the ethernet stuff was on about
three pages of the manual.

John

 

[Mark Jones]

Individuals can still make some cool small projects, but not huge ones.

You could perhaps make a hang glider but not a stealth fighter.

Hmm, I'd beg to differ here, in the instance that hang-gliders are
special. Making a hang-glider is no easy task, dispite the
simple-looking geometry. Those who put bamboo and garbage bags
together to make a "flying contraption" have a nasty reputation of
killing themselves.

Modern hang-gliders are the product of 50+ years of [technological]
refinement and are still getting better and safer every day. There are
many factors that go into the performance and stability of a
flexible-wing craft; anyone trying to design them without being an
ultralight aeronautics engineer is asking for trouble.



-- "Theoretically speaking... if a vehicle's mass were reduced to zero
and its speed increased to twice the speed of light, would time
outside the vehicle appear to run backwards at 1x speed?" MCJ 200405

 

[mc]

The starter pack for Visual C# or Visual Basic (about $99) is very nice and
gives you the full power of the .NET Framework.

 

[Charles Edmondson]

I'm staggered that they bother to produce these massive books (and sets of
books) for colossal prices.

If I were them, I would slap all the documentation on DVD and give it away.

I guess they charge money so that only serious programmers leap that
barrier.

You've got to wonder if something is a good idea if it needs books that
size!




Well, you still can in the same way you can still make anything else.

It is just the scale of complexity has widened.

Individuals can still make some cool small projects, but not huge ones.

You could perhaps make a hang glider but not a stealth fighter.

Microsoft are big enough to do the colossal projects.
There's no way I want to spend the time needed to develop the software that
I have on my PC, or the PC itself.

I look for projects that are small enough to be done by me, yet big and
clever enough to be satisfying and fun.

Actually, I think it is the prevailing idea that 'anyone' can program
computers. Like in this weeks West Wing, they talked about firing
teachers, and they said "Let them just learn to program computers"

Now, I can program computers, including embeddeed systems, and I know
that not just anyone can program computers! To do it right requires a
certain amount of anal retentiveness that most don't have. I am not a
good programmer. I am barely above the hacker level.

But, what does this have to do with expensive computer books? It is
because they have convinced every high school dropout that, if they just
go to ITT tech, and take 6 months of classes, then they too can earn
100K a year programming computers. And, as part of that, they need to
get certifications in .NET (or MSCE, or whatever the latest buzzword is)
and to get those certifications, they need to purchase these books.
(Evidently, reading them is optional!) So, the writers and publishers
make a lot of money, as usual, from the infinity gullibility of the
public! (Scott Adams is right, again...)

 

[Reg Edwards]

Amongst other things, I write high-quality computer programs. I give them
away for free to anybody who can find a good home. I went on my first (and
last) 2-day programming course around 1962 as a small sideline of a
particular large engineering project. The input/output device was a
teleprinter and the media was ticker-tape. I forget the number of holes.

Quality is fitness for the intended purpose.

Reliability is Quality versus Time.

And if the job is done by a committee, if it is ever finished, the result is
a bricked Arabian camel with 5 or 6 humps.

43 years later, in my opinion, for what it's worth, the salient attribute of
so-called professional computer programmers is the ability to make vast
amounts of money under false pretences.

 

[Reg Edwards]

In anticipation of a query "What is a bricked camel?"

As is well known there are such things as Middle Eastern camel races. (What
a pity there is a war on at present. It detracts from normal life.)

The first driver sits on a saddle strapped to the humps.

At the start of the race a second driver stands BEHIND the camel with an
ordinary standard-size house-brick held in each hand with his arms far apart
at an appropriately correct height.

On the signal from the starting gun, the first driver digs in his spurs and
the second driver brings together, as hard as he can, the pair of bricks
with the aim of enclosing the camel's testicles between them.

The second driver is immediately left well behind of course. But you get
the idea - the camel certainly does! It's not THAT stupid!

 

[Keith Williams]

In anticipation of a query "What is a bricked camel?"

As is well known there are such things as Middle Eastern camel races. (What
a pity there is a war on at present. It detracts from normal life.)

The first driver sits on a saddle strapped to the humps.

At the start of the race a second driver stands BEHIND the camel with an
ordinary standard-size house-brick held in each hand with his arms far apart
at an appropriately correct height.

On the signal from the starting gun, the first driver digs in his spurs and
the second driver brings together, as hard as he can, the pair of bricks
with the aim of enclosing the camel's testicles between them.

The second driver is immediately left well behind of course. But you get
the idea - the camel certainly does! It's not THAT stupid!

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"No, you make sure to keep your fingers from getting between the
bricks."

 

[artie]

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"No, you make sure to keep your fingers from getting between the
bricks."

ISTR that not only are most camels *very* good at spitting, they can
also kick extremely well. I wouldn't want to be the bloke trying this
the *second* time...

 

[Kryten]

I heard a similar joke where a guy asks if a camel will get him over the
desert.

The dealer says sure, so long as you feed it water it and brick it.

The guy buys the camel, gets a fair way into the desert and the camel dies.

After nearly dying himself, he gets found by some nomads who take him back.

When recovered he gets hold of the camel dealer and demands compensation for
the trauma.

The dealer says no way, did you feed it, water it and brick it?

The guy says "what the ???? does it need bricks for?"

"Ah" says the dealer, when it has almost drunk it's fill at the water hole,
you sneak up behind with a brick in each hand and clap them onto it's
testicles.
When the camel goes

<sound effect of pain-induced sharp intake of breath>,

it sucks up many more gallons of water!

 

[JeffM]

If I were them, I would slap all the documentation on DVD

Kryten

Density would be nice.
Sure would make it easy to search for something obscure
--and just as easy to copy.

and give it away.

You covered this.
It's not hard to stop thinking like an engineer
and start thinking like a marketing guy.
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20041225.html

 

[Mike]

I'm staggered that they bother to produce these massive books (and sets of
books) for colossal prices.

If I were them, I would slap all the documentation on DVD and give it away.

I don't know about the availability on DVD, but I have the printed
documentation in addition to the online documentation. The printed
documentation is offered for those of us who like to have it in book form.
The online documentation, which I suppose I could put on a DVD if I was so
inclined, is indeed free.

-- Mike --

 

[Danny T]

I'm staggered that they bother to produce these massive books (and sets of
books) for colossal prices.

I'm a Senior Web Developer, and around 80-90% of what I know has come
from the internet (for free)! When I was learning during
GCSEs/A-levels), I couldn't afford to buy books on subjects that may not
make me money, so I used the web. I'd highly recommend it over any book,
since you can read the opinions of a thousand people for free, not one
for £30. It's also full of up-to-date information - something a book (in
a non-electrical form) can never rival!

If I were them, I would slap all the documentation on DVD and
give it away.

They do! Not on DVD, but the web. All documentation for the Microsoft
..NET framework is published online at MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com),
along with all the APIs and DOMs you could think of. The books generally
cover things from "teaching" side, whereas the online docs serve as
mainly for reference. They do also include very good examples against
the whole of the .NET Framework

 

[Danny T]

The starter pack for Visual C# or Visual Basic (about $99) is very nice and
gives you the full power of the .NET Framework.

Is that like a cut down version of Visual Studio?

I use VS at work, but I've grown fond of the new Express packages.
They're lightweight and fast, though still beta (and using the next
version of the framework):

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

 

[John Larkin]

Is that like a cut down version of Visual Studio?

I use VS at work, but I've grown fond of the new Express packages.
They're lightweight and fast, though still beta (and using the next
version of the framework):

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

You have to realize that guys like Jim and I are fulltime circuit
designers. We have an infinite, unlearnable amount of stuff to keep up
with in our own field, and all the work we can handle, often more. If
we do want to write a program to do some math, we need to do it
quickly, without spending a couple years getting up to speed in .NET
and C++ classes and stuff like that. We're solving math problems, so
user interface isn't important. The only eye candy that's really
useful to us is graphing data so we can get a feel for the dynamics of
a system, and even then we can dump a comma-delimited file to a
grapher program. Some of the stuff I do is very compute intensive, so
a pig like Visual Basic would be unusable. So what we need is a
simple, quick, easy to learn and easy to use language that runs fast.
And, at least for me, can do hardware i/o without requiring me to
write device drivers.

I think pRogramming should be the fourth 'R' of basic education,
something everybody can do. Modern OS's have gone a long way to making
programming something only pros have time to learn.

If I wanted to spend serious hours learning a new computer skill, it
would be learning Linux.

John