Entering the embedded world... help?

Isaac Bosompem wrote:

> > question "which CPU should I learn? [to get into the embedded world]"
> > That's about 60,000 words on the topic, and it's only an introduction.
>
> Hey you are currently drafting a book?!? Please let me know of the
> title and does your publisher have any plans of releasing the book in
> Canada?

My publisher is Elsevier, and they sell to anyone, anywhere, with money
;) You'll find the book on Amazon once it's released. My other books
seem to sell pretty well into Canada.

The working title is "From Consultancy to Corporate" with a subhead or
alt title "So, You Want To Be An Embedded Engineer". Argument on this
is still underway and will not cease until the catalog entry is EDI'd
to retailers. The final ms will be in the publisher's hands by 3/30,
expect to see it in June or July.

The tenor of the book is not quite as curmudgeonly as the message I
just posted, but it uses a conversational style throughout and is
infested with something I am pleased to call humor.

larwe wrote:
> Isaac Bosompem wrote:
>
> > > question "which CPU should I learn? [to get into the embedded world]"
> > > That's about 60,000 words on the topic, and it's only an introduction.
> >
> > Hey you are currently drafting a book?!? Please let me know of the
> > title and does your publisher have any plans of releasing the book in
> > Canada?
>
> My publisher is Elsevier, and they sell to anyone, anywhere, with money
> ;) You'll find the book on Amazon once it's released. My other books
> seem to sell pretty well into Canada.

> The working title is "From Consultancy to Corporate" with a subhead or
> alt title "So, You Want To Be An Embedded Engineer". Argument on this
> is still underway and will not cease until the catalog entry is EDI'd
> to retailers. The final ms will be in the publisher's hands by 3/30,
> expect to see it in June or July.

So you got sort of a business perspective thrown into there? It seems
to be what I am looking for.
> The tenor of the book is not quite as curmudgeonly as the message I
> just posted, but it uses a conversational style throughout and is
> infested with something I am pleased to call humor.
I like books with some humor, it shows me that the author is a human :)

Isaac Bosompem wrote:
> larwe wrote:
> 
>>Isaac Bosompem wrote:
>>The tenor of the book is not quite as curmudgeonly as the message I
>>just posted, 

Shame, I had a smile on my face by the time I got to the end of that...

>>but it uses a conversational style throughout and is
>>infested with something I am pleased to call humor.
> 
> I like books with some humor, it shows me that the author is a human :)

Here, we prefer our authors to have humour :)

-jg

"larwe" <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140749904.878569.220010@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> Different people ask it for different reasons. Almost half of my
> upcoming book talks about roughly half a dozen different processors,
> and why those specific chips might be one "correct" answer to the
> question "which CPU should I learn? [to get into the embedded world]"
> That's about 60,000 words on the topic, and it's only an introduction.
>
> > > I'd like to code in C++ or C, but I can learn assemblers. Coding is
not
> > > a problem for me; blowing up hardware occasionally is. Because I like
> >
> > Most everyone uses C or C++ these days.
>
> I take a bit of exception to the idea that "everyone uses C++",
> especially in the embedded arena. I guess it's been a few months since
> this particular chestnut was sizzled on the coals in c.a.e., so maybe
> we should just cut and paste the last argument thread to save
> everyone's time.
>
> I'm starting to see an approach that approximates sanity with regards
> to the use of Java in high-end embedded projects, rather than C++ (a
> language which is abhorred on any architecture by all right-thinking
> embedded engineers - and of course, only an exceptionally jaded
> masochist who has lost the phone number of his dominatrix or can no
> longer afford her dungeon rates would contemplate C++ on an 8-bit
> micro).
>
> If you're prepared to live with the overhead of C++, and you're
> convinced that there is something to be gained in your application from
> a language that has OO syntactic elements (like C++) rather than merely
> OO capability (like C), using Java instead can be a pleasant surprise.
> Among other advantages of Java over C++, it is occasionally possible to
> find someone who can answer a Java question both exactly and correctly.
> Furthermore, positively several Java questions do not have as their
> "real" answer a 5,000 word argument amongst five language lawyers. No
> C++ question can be answered without either:
>
> a) employing several language lawyers of opposing viewpoints, and/or
>
> b) developing a new draft standard defining a version of the language
> with the desired functionality.
>
> Dogma is a wonderful thing, isn't it?
>
> In Australian universities, they [used to?] teach a subject called
> creative accounting. The core of this subject is: Your company bought
> $X, sold $Y and received $Z over the past year. Your CEO, stockbroker
> or drug dealer wants the company to show a profit of $F. Obtain this
> result in a GAAP-compliant way.
>
> In the past, I've seen vast practical use for this coursework in terms
> of justifying (or killing) value engineering projects, obfuscating
> projected bill-of-materials costs, and demonstrating that a department
> has met its budgetary goals. But the single most useful fact it taught
> me is that all metrics not directly derived from underlying measurable
> physical phenomena are nonsense - and cost/productivity/reliability
> savings realized by moving to C++ are at the bad end of the spectrum.
>
> Moving from assembly to C at a certain [fuzzy] size/complexity point
> can be justified merely in terms of the number of people that are
> comfortable programming in the language (though I am quite convinced
> that there's more gain than merely this one point, and most c.a.e
> readers would agree with this).
>
> Moving to C++ in embedded projects(*) requires justifications that
> typically end in the words "MY GOD! A MAUVE DOLPHIN ON A BICYCLE IS
> FLYING PAST THE WINDOW!" (Alt-F4 PowerPoint drivel while everyone looks
> out the window). "This concludes the presentation; in summary, you
> should do what I say".

Lewin, I take my hat off and bow respectfully. You have such a way with
words :-)
(the original quote left unsnipped out of respect).

Meindert

"larwe" <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140752874.258578.118790@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> Isaac Bosompem wrote:
>
> > > question "which CPU should I learn? [to get into the embedded world]"
> > > That's about 60,000 words on the topic, and it's only an introduction.
> >
> > Hey you are currently drafting a book?!? Please let me know of the
> > title and does your publisher have any plans of releasing the book in
> > Canada?
>
> My publisher is Elsevier, and they sell to anyone, anywhere, with money
> ;) You'll find the book on Amazon once it's released. My other books
> seem to sell pretty well into Canada.

Aha, even a Dutch publisher. It gets better all the time ;-)
I will certainly buy a copy!

> The tenor of the book is not quite as curmudgeonly as the message I
> just posted, but it uses a conversational style throughout and is
> infested with something I am pleased to call humor.

Looking forward to reading that. Humer is essential in life, especially the
life of an embedded person....

Meindert

On 23 Feb 2006 19:47:54 -0800, "larwe" <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote:

>My publisher is Elsevier, and they sell to anyone, anywhere, with money
>;) 

Strange.  Just the other day I just noted a comment by scientists who
refuse categorically to review for, submit to, or subscribe to
Elsevier owned publications -- unless and until they provide open
access to the scientific papers after 6 months.  They also included
other publications with similar policies of control and capitalization
on scientific intellectual property, including conference volumes. But
they didn't mention the others by name, as they did Elsevier.

Jon

Gosh! There is at least one other sane person out there. I think another
point is that it seems like the power-point people assume that a RTOS is
mandatory, regardless of system requirements.
------------------------------
H. Stuart Brooks
Fredericksburg VA

> I need a lot of I/O. I need an interface to 10/100mb ethernet, able to
> handle TCP or at least UDP; I need at least 1 and ideally 4 buffered
> RS-232 ports, and I have about 32 logic inputs (which I've multiplexed
> down, because I don't need to see them all simultaneously or at
> incredibly high speeds) and about 20 outputs. Some of the outputs are
> candidates for being controlled in interrupts routines at a fairly high
> rate (~500/sec); I'm doing 4 channels of PWM to drive 4 dimmer
> channels, and would rather have more. I'd also like to do a few
> channels of tone generation, which right now I"m doing with 555's and
> would rather have in the processor. (So maybe I need an interrupt rate
> more like 2000/sec, to get a decent range of possible tones.)


Have you thought about implementing some of this in an FPGA/CPLD?

The rs232 ports, IO, PWM and tone generation are almost trivial to
implement (when you know what you're doing). The most difficult bit
could be designing and implementing the control interface from
whatever uC you decide to use. Something like a simple SPI interface
would be easy to do.


Just food for thought.


Nial

Isaac Bosompem wrote:

> > The working title is "From Consultancy to Corporate" with a subhead or
> > alt title "So, You Want To Be An Embedded Engineer". Argument on this
>
> So you got sort of a business perspective thrown into there? It seems
> to be what I am looking for.

The book's topics are wide-ranging. The aim is to describe what the job
typically involves at three levels: consultancy, working for a small
shop, and working for a big corporation. It gives some idea of where
the workload is distributed in those three circumstances. It also
attempts to answer a bunch of FAQs in this group along the lines of
"I'm a technician, how do I become an embedded guy", or "I'm an apps
programmer in Windows, how do I become an embedded guy".

[In simple terms, I talk about the first category building up to a
software understanding by taking their hardware knowledge and working
with low-end 8-bit micros, and I talk about the second category
building down from high-end 32-bit embedded systems].

It talks a little about some other issues, mostly in the context of
large corporations: outsourcing, skilled worker visas, and so forth.

> I like books with some humor, it shows me that the author is a human :)

Or that someone finally cracked the Turing test.

Meindert Sprang wrote:

> Lewin, I take my hat off and bow respectfully. You have such a way with
> words :-)

What can I tell you, I enjoy reading Jonathan Swift and aspire to be a
Houynhm.