[time-nuts] I want a good micro-controller

[Dave Mallery]

bill

but wasn't that hardware beautiful??? (gazes at 11/70 backplane on wall...)

dave

On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 10:10 AM, wje <wje at quackers.net> wrote:

>   You certainly don't need formal training to be a good programmer; I've
>   seen plenty of code from CS grads that's terrible, and very nice code
>   from art majors.
>   In my book, a good program is one one that's organized logically, well
>   documented, and performs the job it was designed to do. A god
>   programmer is someone that produces such programs. That's it. The
>   problem is that, with the advent PCs and easily-accessible programming
>   tools, everyone thinks they can write code, and many can't. Then what
>   you end up with is a tangled mess that's unmaintainable and
>   indecipherable.
>   It's interesting that any number of EE's will take great care in
>   circuit design, but then throw together some poorly-designed code to
>   run their beautiful circuit. But, this has been endemic in the hardware
>   industry for as long as I've been around. Hardware companies frequently
>   have the attitude that it's the hardware that's important and the
>   software is just one of those minor bits that has to get tacked on.
>   This was true even for some companies that should have known better;
>   there were plenty of HW engineers I ran into back in the old Digital
>   days that, even though they were building minicomputers, really
>   considered software an unfortunate requirement that had to be shipped
>   with their beautiful hardware.
>   Ah well, this is really wandering off-topic and my blood pressure's
>   going up. I think I'll go write some C code for an 8-bit micro to calm
>   down. And yes, I use vi. :)
> Bill Ezell
> ----------
> They said 'Windows or better'
> so I used Linux.
>
>    Scott Newell wrote:
>
> At 07:36 AM 8/16/2008, wje wrote:
>
>
>
> I have both EE and CS degrees, and I work in both worlds. In my humble
> (but completely accurate and stable) opinion, Basic is not a programming
> language. It's a tool of Satan designed to convince people that they are
> programmers when they really should stick to their janitorial duties.
> This is a subset of the general problem that everyone thinks they are
> programmers, and usually think their code is perfect. But, that's a rant
> for a different audience.
>
>
> So, how do you tell if you're not a programmer, but pretending to be
> one?  My code is far from perfect, but it can usually be made to get
> the job done.  I try not to cut too many corners, and the ones that I
> do cut bother me.  But when you're the lone programmer on projects,
> it's hard to know if you're crummy or decent, since there's no one to
> measure against.  (Of course, there's the metric of 'product shipped,
> product works, bossman happy, paycheck cashed', but that doesn't
> distinguish between good and bad programmers, just programmers that
> can fool others along with themselves.)
>
>
>
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-- 
Dave Mallery, K5EN (ubuntu linux 8.04)
PO Box 3519; T or C, NM 87901

no gates...
no windows!
free at last!
linux counter #64628 (since 1997)

"People aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be."
--PJ, May 2007