Re: Disobeying jet engines - why?

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:12:21 +0000, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

In message <9nlsp35asmtgjb00l601qnrgr6at66tnhg@xxxxxxx>, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:55:38 -0800, "Joel Koltner"
<zapwireDASHgroups@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2dhpp3p0ahl3qm4co9ms0jgiqak12vp7tq@xxxxxxxxxx

So it dawned on me
that he didn't ever give a damn about my problem, he just wanted to
fiddle with databases. Similarly, there are lots of programmers who
aren't interested in your dinky buttons and LCD's, they really want to
get into context switching and schedulers and dynamic memory
assignment algorithms.

I wish I could say it wasn't true. Although if you are doing genuine RT
work you do need an engineer who understands what semaphores are for and
how to design a things to prevent deadlocks occurring.

If you use state machines, and don't multitask, you don't need
semaphores. If you don't allocate resources, you can't have deadlocks.

It's simple.





I think even more would-be programmers have simply been sold a bill of goods
by those who'd like to sell you databases, RTOSes, etc. in the first
place --

There is always the risk in computing that using the bleeding edge new
stuff is sexy and in a poorly managed environment (and sad to say many
software shops are badly managed) they tend to adjust things to justify
getting in the newest latest and greatest toys. Inevitably the salesman,
on commission sells them the most expensive stuff he can get away
with...

Programmers want that fancy stuff on their resumes.




If you have a specification of what you need from the software then it
is harder to get sold a gold plated elephant when you wanted a pet
mouse.

they have a difficult time conceiving how the problem ought to be
solved "from
scratch" so they fall for the advertisements telling them that all their
problems will become trivially simple if only they send over a purchase order.

Sometimes the right thing to do is to buy the correct development tool
for the job. Anyone who attempts to write a database from scratch for a
PC wants their head examining (and that was true almost from the early
days of CPM). Same with anyone who attempts to debug embedded code in a
hard RT environment without using the right tools.

Umm, I should have my head examined. Twice.

John


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