Partially agree, the same could be said about the Parallax crowd 20 years ago.
I think the real problem is Abstraction. Most things are assembled as blocks, with no idea how the blocks work. It seems like many projects today consist of, A) Take X microcontroller B) Add Y1, Y2, Yx component blocks (LCD screen, motor controller, etc.) C) Add connecting wires D) Use manufacture supplied libraries E) Add some custom code for your domain.
Which is exactly the progression that software made. When was the last time you wrote your own bios, bootloader, os, device drivers, filesystem, network stack, etc.? You don't do that now, as you said, "most things are assembled as blocks," except it's worse than that, you just get a big monolithic "OS" now days install that on your desktop and then you write "custom code for your domain."
I don't think this is a bad thing, since all that software that you don't write yourself is available as open source and you can still dig in and see how it works if you want. I'm not a close follower of arduino, but from what I understand the low-level code and board schematics and layout are open source, so it's kind of the same idea. I don't think the processor is open source though (having the verilog code, timing constraints, layout, etc. for that would be the ideal).
I've been designing electronics and firmware professionally for my entire career. Right now I'm acting as a consultant developing a network-enabled industrial device. It's going to be powered by an Arduino simply because it's easy to do, robust enough (after I design appropriate power supply protection), and most important: enormous amounts of documentation and experience in the community means I can probably complete the entire project in less than a day of work.
That's what matters. Not some mistaken concept of "gentrification" because you're pissed off at opening up your Good ol' boys club.
> I've been designing electronics and firmware professionally for my entire career.
That makes absolutely no difference. You can still be a bad engineer.
If you find Arduino bastardized C++ superior than AVR-GCC, you are a poor developer. Everything you can do with Arduino C++ wrapper you can do with normal C++. You'll save resources, end up with firmware, written in industrially standard language, will have better control over hardware.
> experience in the community means I can probably complete the entire project in less than a day of work.
If you after "designing electronics and firmware professionally for the entire career
" still need assistance from the community for already well-documented 8-bit controller, it tells about you.
> pissed off at opening up your Good ol' boys club.
No, I am not - after all I am not an embedded developer; I am pissed that it is advertised as something it is not: not a good tool for making industrial automation, not a good tool to stay with if you decide to get involved with automation seriously. It gives a wrong idea to the student about how AVR works, it locks you in with the platform and at the same time dominates the sector.
I think the key came from this video in the first few minutes, when Kernighan talked about a Government Controlled Monopoly where Bell Labs got predictable fixed funding from ATT. I think this is the only way Open Allocation can work on such a scale.
Not really, companies like Apple/Microsoft are sitting on so much cash they can literally piss away billions on R&D and it would never threaten their viability (how much did Microsoft just write off on failed Nokia deal ?) - but it seems that modern corporate doesn't see this as valuable approach - I can only speculate why.
Bell Labs was massive. It had 11,000 people who were involved in pretty much every nukes and cranny ranging from cosmology to transistors to UNIX. Microsoft research probably comes closest to modern equivalent of Bell Labs and it has only 1000 people. So Bell Labs was like 10 MSR combined in to one!
It's really a pity we don't have anything like Bell Labs any more even though profits have grown by leaps and bound. As it is investors would be more than happy to shutdown something like MSR and constantly force the company to "justify" its existence.
I don't know if it's an entirely fair comparison to go by body count. Things have gotten a lot more efficient since the Bell Labs days. Even Richard Hamming stated "when I first started working there was a woman who walked around handing out the coffee and donuts, now a machine does that and her job no longer exists."
Sure but we are talking about Bell labs organizational structure - I haven't heard Microsoft doing such a thing in their R&D - I'd be interested to know if I'm wrong on this actually.
Seems like an insurance policy, except that you get access to the details of past settled cases. Could I not just join as soon as I get served a notice?
You know how they say that the best defense is a good offense. Well, this is the same concept. Sure, you can join the defense fund at any time, but by joining early, and putting up a good fight, you are helping to make sure that you your self will never get served. By joining the fund you are also sending a message to the troll that you are willing to fight, which makes you a harder target.
True, when I got the email this morning as a response, I had forgotten that I signed the petition. For a few moments I thought something good was going to be published.
As stated, two big variables are clock rate and feature size, which both effect mean time between failures (MTBF). Being more conservative increases this metric. I know from working in a fab that there are many electrical inspection steps along the process, so failures are caught during the manufacturing process (reducing the chance that you see them in the final product). Once the chip is packaged, and assuming that it is operated in a nominal environment, then failures are not that common.
I think the real problem is Abstraction. Most things are assembled as blocks, with no idea how the blocks work. It seems like many projects today consist of, A) Take X microcontroller B) Add Y1, Y2, Yx component blocks (LCD screen, motor controller, etc.) C) Add connecting wires D) Use manufacture supplied libraries E) Add some custom code for your domain.