more EE Times nonsense
in [Design]
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From: krw on 16 Apr 2010 19:03 On Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:05:14 -0700, "Joel Koltner" <zapwireDASHgroups(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message >news:0l4hs553o19p5vp3c2ver6mtmkfpqt0aum(a)4ax.com... >> Frankly, I'd be reluctant to hire an engineer as old as myself. I can >> clearly see that I have less energy than I used to have, and am >> getting reluctant to learn new things like C++ and Perl and VHDL >> (which, you have to admit, are abominations.) > >VHDL especially... talk about overly-wordy... Wordy, yes, but for good reason. >While it's not cheap, if you can spare the time going to the week-long classes >to learn a new programming/hardware design language is quite effective, at >least for me -- it's faster than sitting down and reading a book (particularly >since a good instructor is going to omit the less-important details, whereas >with a book detecting which details are less important and skipping them >yourself can sometimes be a bit of a catch-22), and of course you get to ask >questions and expect a solid response, which a book can't do (and a newsgroup >takes longer and gets sidetracked). That's the way I like to do it. I've found that the instructor can give the "idea behind" a language that you really don't get from a book. >I've been reading up a bit on wxPython in my spare time lately (it's a GUI-ing >kit for the Python language -- a set of bindings for wxWidgets, which is >C++-based cross-platform GUI toolkit that I used in one piece of software for >work here). I'm thinking of re-writing your PowerBASIC 11802 screen capture >routine in it, just as an exercise... should be fun, if I do it! Fun? You must like dentists, too. ;-) <...>
From: krw on 16 Apr 2010 19:07 On Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:00:08 -0700, John Larkin <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >On Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:05:14 -0700, "Joel Koltner" ><zapwireDASHgroups(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >>"John Larkin" <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message >>news:0l4hs553o19p5vp3c2ver6mtmkfpqt0aum(a)4ax.com... >>> Frankly, I'd be reluctant to hire an engineer as old as myself. I can >>> clearly see that I have less energy than I used to have, and am >>> getting reluctant to learn new things like C++ and Perl and VHDL >>> (which, you have to admit, are abominations.) >> >>VHDL especially... talk about overly-wordy... > >There's apparently no logic as to where you put semicolons. Ironic in >a logic design language. Actually there is (they go at the end of statements). It took me a while to "get it", though. ;-) >>While it's not cheap, if you can spare the time going to the week-long classes >>to learn a new programming/hardware design language is quite effective, at >>least for me -- it's faster than sitting down and reading a book (particularly >>since a good instructor is going to omit the less-important details, whereas >>with a book detecting which details are less important and skipping them >>yourself can sometimes be a bit of a catch-22), and of course you get to ask >>questions and expect a solid response, which a book can't do (and a newsgroup >>takes longer and gets sidetracked). > >My best FPGA guy gave us a seminar on VHDL. One of my test techs >really took to it, so I think she's on track to move up to >engineering. She's going to do a simple VME module FPGA soon for >starters. Then I'll have *two* people who can be my FPGA compilers. I >can scribble a schematic/block disgram on a whiteboard, and they can >go make it work. Just another level of design abstraction. Good idea. VHDL isn't all that difficult if it's taught right the first time. When I first took the course the instructor got bogged down in internals that muddied up the whole thing. I taught myself VHDL a few years later. I wish I kept the book I used (one of the FPGA vendors gave it to me and as soon as I moved on to Ashenden it sprouted legs). <...>
From: dagmargoodboat on 16 Apr 2010 19:27 On Apr 16, 6:02 am, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > On Apr 16, 8:41 am, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > > > On Apr 14, 3:41 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > > > > On Apr 14, 2:01 am, John Larkin > > > > Get a job, bozo. Design some electronics. > > > > "Get a job" is easier said than done, particularly for a 67-year-old > > > in the Netherlands. I'm still applying for the occasional job, but the > > > statistical expectation that I'll ever get one around here has gotten > > > to be vanishingly small. > > > Obama and Pelosi have told us their new healthscare[tm] mandatory > > insurance thing will put jobs here in overdrive, spur innovation. > > (They're trying to copy you guys, sort of.) (Or maybe Venezuela.) > > > Since you already have that, it ought to be easy for you to start up a > > company, and probably a lot of fun. Just chunk out your life > > savings, hire a few employees, and off you go. > > James Arthur doesn't seem to have noticed Obama's "new" mandatory > insurance thing was iveted by Bismark in Germany over a century ago. > It might conceiveably spur innovation in the USA - though the 64% 85% > of > the US population who already have medical insurance would seem to be > a perfectly adequate market to drive whatever innovation is necessary Obama said otherwise. But then, he says so many things. Shrug. > - but it isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to my > environment, where the nearest I've got to a job in recent years was > when Philips Medical Systems was contemplating developing a phased > array of ultrasound transducers for cooking tumours in situ - an old > idea that is still waiting on a method for measuring the temperature > rise inside the tumour being cooked. > > I asked about temperature monitoring during the interview, and didn't > get an answer ... You're right, it's not creating jobs here either: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/ArticlePrint.aspx?id=530389 So, back to the question, why not start your own outfit, and do it right? That's what makes the world a better place, people starting cool companies and hiring folks to work in them. -- Cheers, James Arthur
From: Joel Koltner on 16 Apr 2010 19:48 <krw(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote in message news:l1rhs5dh3uakl9ev2jbqgibistiu1i3r67(a)4ax.com... > On Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:05:14 -0700, "Joel Koltner" >>VHDL especially... talk about overly-wordy... > Wordy, yes, but for good reason. I've received errors from VHDL compilers to the effect of, e.g., "there needs to be a colon precisely HERE; please insert it and re-compile." -- If a compiler is smart enough to know EXACTLY what's "missing," let me suggest that maybe the language doesn't need that bit of syntax or whatever in the first place... But in general I prefer concise languages. E.g., simple closing constructs such as brackets in C/C++ or plain old tabs in Python rather than "end for," "end loop," "end xxxxx" like VHDL (...and Visual BASIC and...). That being said, back when I used to write VHDL (I haven't in... wow... the better part of a decade now), I slowly built up a bunch of utility functions and various types/structures and what-not and eventually got to the point where I didn't feel like I was fighting with the language anymore and could quickly and reasonably easily express the functionality I was after. (Instead I got to the point where I discovered constructs like ALIAS were only *partially* supported for synthesis in Synplicity... and Synplicity was already heads and shoulders above the piece of junk that was Synopsys's FPGA Express [aka, Distress]... no wonder Synposys bought them!) > Fun? You must like dentists, too. ;-) The thing I like and enjoy about programming is that, being "all digital," generally things either work or they don't work, and if they don't work there's usually little or no cost involved by approaching the problem from an entirely different angle. Contrast that with, e.g,. RF design, where (1) you'd better come up with a reasonably good hardware architecture in the first place, as choosing poorly tends to be much more expensive in that board turns are required... and (2) while it's no problem making a receiver or whatever that "generally" works, you can expend a ton of time trying to meet sensitivity specs or interference specs or whatever, and yet there's often not a whole lot to show for it: Some shielding here, some layout changes there, some component value changes over yonder -- not anything the average person will notice. In other words, I find some programming to be a relaxing thing to do when the difficult things start to become a little stressful. Of course, getting the difficult things to work is far more rewarding as well -- I wouldn't want to be a professional software writer, or at least not for the kind of software I write that's usually some weird little utility routine or whatnot but certainly not anything truly difficult/innovative (like a Google-level search engine, for instance); that'd get boring fast. Programmable logic design is kind of inbetween these two extremes -- it stills works or it doesn't, mistakes are usually cheap (unless you completely mis-estimate the scope of the problem and need a bigger part), but hopefully the whole problem is due to having to perform some operation quickly or otherwise very efficienctly because that's why you picked an FPGA in the first place. (Just sweeping up a few random logic gates into a PLD is more of a chore than "fun.") One of the most interesting FPGA designs I did was a memory controller that had a bunch of FIFOed interfaces to various data consumers/generators hooked up to a 32-channel 2D DMA engine all connected to 8 sticks (4GB) of PC133 SDRAM... the fun part was trying to make the thing reasonably efficienct under the memory access demands of the numerous different DMA clients, so the core memory controller would usually be working on two transactions in parallel and would interleave various RAS and CAS cycles and even re-order memory accesses (then re-re-ordering them back correctly inside the controller) in order to try to never have to stall waiting for a page's precharge delay (that was something like 8 cycles). Granted, if you were working on superscalar CPUs back at IBM, this probably isn't that impressive... :-) ...but as I say, it was certainly fun for me at the time! ---Joel
From: Joel Koltner on 16 Apr 2010 19:50
<krw(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote in message news:06rhs5pqejo9trp4adu3u1diqrpdbt239u(a)4ax.com... > I wish I > kept the book I used (one of the FPGA vendors gave it to me and as soon as I > moved on to Ashenden it sprouted legs). Ever looked at Ben Cohen's books? There's a man who like a VERY orderly design process! |