Thanks, you guys, for sharing.
It is probably the most enlightning and professional posts I have read on any
mailing list
for a long time.
It sure brings memory of my first "real life scenario" - debugging
software for an image-
analysis based railroad weed sprayer at 3AM (only time we could have the tracks)
in -10
degrees celcius and strong winds - standing on a plain, open, flatbed waggon
going 30
mph. Light snow. While all the connectors broke clean off the PCBs because of
the
vibration, red rust from the brakes penetrated everything and the 4kW inverter
for the
pump spread its gentle spikes and sawtooths all over my signals.
Debugging with heavy gloves and parca coat, flashlight, nowhere to put the
mouse. And
the gentle mist of the water from the 24 nozzles under the waggon adding their
mild,
bone cold drizzle of water.
I bet the crusaders suffered less during their, more or less, heroic quests.
Hereby my Valentine's toast to all Software-Jedi's out there, and to
professional clients
who know what the jobs they are giving us involves !
Cheers,
Kent
Good Compiler for the MSP430
Started by ●February 13, 2004
Reply by ●February 14, 20042004-02-14
Reply by ●February 14, 20042004-02-14
You must be my long lost twin! Algeria, yup, Morroco, Libya many times,
spent a few quiet weeks in a Libyan jail once for 'sabotage' (refusing
to guarantee a 9 month job would be done in 6 weeks) iran, Iraq, never
turned one down until after the Libyan thing, the money was too unreal
for these countries. After Libya I was once offered 10,000 a week by
the libyans to return and finish the job (I'd actually done a runner to
get out the first time), and told them they didn't have enough money in
their entire country to get me back for a week. Done a few armed jobbies
too. After Libya I realised I was getting too old and could no longer
catch bullets in my teeth.
Cheers
Al
spent a few quiet weeks in a Libyan jail once for 'sabotage' (refusing
to guarantee a 9 month job would be done in 6 weeks) iran, Iraq, never
turned one down until after the Libyan thing, the money was too unreal
for these countries. After Libya I was once offered 10,000 a week by
the libyans to return and finish the job (I'd actually done a runner to
get out the first time), and told them they didn't have enough money in
their entire country to get me back for a week. Done a few armed jobbies
too. After Libya I realised I was getting too old and could no longer
catch bullets in my teeth.
Cheers
Al
Reply by ●February 14, 20042004-02-14
Hi Kent, it's amazing how rough programming can get. I must admit
I'd
take a job in the desert over one in the cold anytime, but it sure
sounds like fun.
Cheers
Al
take a job in the desert over one in the cold anytime, but it sure
sounds like fun.
Cheers
Al
Reply by ●March 2, 20042004-03-02
Indeed,
IAR welcomes trials -30 days free on www.iar.com. Then if in the UK
ring IAR London for pricing.
Same old thing really -you get what you pay for. Just last week I saw
the IAR 2.xx compiler squeezing code into a 60K part ...ready for a
production run of over 1 million units in an FDD conforming medical
product.
If you are making 2 widgets in a shed then maybe even I would look at
a $199 compiler
Jason Moore
IAR UK
IAR welcomes trials -30 days free on www.iar.com. Then if in the UK
ring IAR London for pricing.
Same old thing really -you get what you pay for. Just last week I saw
the IAR 2.xx compiler squeezing code into a 60K part ...ready for a
production run of over 1 million units in an FDD conforming medical
product.
If you are making 2 widgets in a shed then maybe even I would look at
a $199 compiler
Jason Moore
IAR UK
Reply by ●March 2, 20042004-03-02
Reply by ●March 3, 20042004-03-03
Hi Jason,
It's certainly good to see more IAR staff coming out of the woods, and
contributing to this forum.
> The docking windows equipped version 3.10A is due out next week.
Docking Windows is a must IMO, and it's good that IAR finally support this.
> Same old thing really -you get what you pay for. Just last week I saw
> the IAR 2.xx compiler squeezing code into a 60K part ...ready for a
> production run of over 1 million units in an FDD conforming medical
> product.
That's a pretty arrogant statement considering you can get MSP430 tools at 1/4 the price
that IMO are superior in many ways to IAR's...
However, I had used EW430 for 3 years on MSP430, and literally relied on it for my
bread and butter. EW430 always had been a dependable and stable tool that paid
itself back fairly quickly. One large project was a medical wireless system I designed,
and I never had to resort to ASM to have a F149 handle a datastream of 768 kBps on
one UART, 115 kBps concurrently to a PC on the 2nd UART, and managing TDMA
protocol with near-Bluetooth hopping speed performance.... I think that was on V1.24.
I had always been at a loss however how IAR justified charging 20% of purchase
per year to get "free updates", that didn't really provide that much extra at that time.
More recently I had been told that V1.2X never really had been developed much further,
because the new Platform was being developed -- why the hell were people paying
top dollars each year for "updates" when IAR volunteers it was doing little effort for
V1.2X ???
> If you are making 2 widgets in a shed then maybe even I would look at
> a $199 compiler
Some of the most succesful products in the world at times have come from sheds.
This should not be underestimated.
But this relates more to silicon sales, rather than compiler sales, so I think that the average
potential user of a compiler couldn't care less in his/her selection process that a tool under
consideration was used to create a 1 Million+ run in medical products.
The fact that IAR compared/benchmarked its mature tool to ImageCraft's back then
emerging early Beta further impressed me very little.........
-- Kris
It's certainly good to see more IAR staff coming out of the woods, and
contributing to this forum.
> The docking windows equipped version 3.10A is due out next week.
Docking Windows is a must IMO, and it's good that IAR finally support this.
> Same old thing really -you get what you pay for. Just last week I saw
> the IAR 2.xx compiler squeezing code into a 60K part ...ready for a
> production run of over 1 million units in an FDD conforming medical
> product.
That's a pretty arrogant statement considering you can get MSP430 tools at 1/4 the price
that IMO are superior in many ways to IAR's...
However, I had used EW430 for 3 years on MSP430, and literally relied on it for my
bread and butter. EW430 always had been a dependable and stable tool that paid
itself back fairly quickly. One large project was a medical wireless system I designed,
and I never had to resort to ASM to have a F149 handle a datastream of 768 kBps on
one UART, 115 kBps concurrently to a PC on the 2nd UART, and managing TDMA
protocol with near-Bluetooth hopping speed performance.... I think that was on V1.24.
I had always been at a loss however how IAR justified charging 20% of purchase
per year to get "free updates", that didn't really provide that much extra at that time.
More recently I had been told that V1.2X never really had been developed much further,
because the new Platform was being developed -- why the hell were people paying
top dollars each year for "updates" when IAR volunteers it was doing little effort for
V1.2X ???
> If you are making 2 widgets in a shed then maybe even I would look at
> a $199 compiler
Some of the most succesful products in the world at times have come from sheds.
This should not be underestimated.
But this relates more to silicon sales, rather than compiler sales, so I think that the average
potential user of a compiler couldn't care less in his/her selection process that a tool under
consideration was used to create a 1 Million+ run in medical products.
The fact that IAR compared/benchmarked its mature tool to ImageCraft's back then
emerging early Beta further impressed me very little.........
-- Kris
Reply by ●March 3, 20042004-03-03
Hi Richard,
I actually took the liberty to go first :-)
> Jason, do you work in sales or engineering?
My question :
Jason, have you ever spent Thousands of your own hard-earned dollars
- not some bla-bla company's - on an IAR tool ??
I actually took the liberty to go first :-)
> Jason, do you work in sales or engineering?
My question :
Jason, have you ever spent Thousands of your own hard-earned dollars
- not some bla-bla company's - on an IAR tool ??
Reply by ●March 3, 20042004-03-03
jason_ceng wrote:
> Indeed,
>
> IAR welcomes trials -30 days free on www.iar.com. Then if in the UK
> ring IAR London for pricing.
>
> Same old thing really -you get what you pay for. Just last week I saw
> the IAR 2.xx compiler squeezing code into a 60K part ...ready for a
> production run of over 1 million units in an FDD conforming medical
> product.
>
> If you are making 2 widgets in a shed then maybe even I would look at
> a $199 compiler
>
> Jason Moore
> IAR UK
Should have used assembler, wouldn't have to squeeze. ;@}
Al
> Indeed,
>
> IAR welcomes trials -30 days free on www.iar.com. Then if in the UK
> ring IAR London for pricing.
>
> Same old thing really -you get what you pay for. Just last week I saw
> the IAR 2.xx compiler squeezing code into a 60K part ...ready for a
> production run of over 1 million units in an FDD conforming medical
> product.
>
> If you are making 2 widgets in a shed then maybe even I would look at
> a $199 compiler
>
> Jason Moore
> IAR UK
Should have used assembler, wouldn't have to squeeze. ;@}
Al
Reply by ●March 3, 20042004-03-03
> Jason, have you ever spent Thousands of your own
hard-earned dollars
> - not some bla-bla company's - on an IAR tool ??
Only to find that the debugger has so many strange habits, it can often
require a complete PC power down before restarting.
Al
> - not some bla-bla company's - on an IAR tool ??
Only to find that the debugger has so many strange habits, it can often
require a complete PC power down before restarting.
Al
Reply by ●March 3, 20042004-03-03
Jason,
Check before posting. I assume you're a newbie out of college given the
proud display of CEng. ;-) but perhaps I'm wrong, but still check
facts before posting.
> IAR welcomes trials -30 days free on www.iar.com. Then if in the UK
> ring IAR London for pricing.
>
> Same old thing really -you get what you pay for. Just last week I saw
> the IAR 2.xx compiler squeezing code into a 60K part ...ready for a
> production run of over 1 million units in an FDD conforming medical
> product.
Hmm. Ok, so why did IAR pull the MSP430 benchmarks from their site,
then, when comparing the IAR compiler to the competition? Perhaps
somebody actually produced smaller code? We'll never know... :-)
> If you are making 2 widgets in a shed then maybe even I would look at
> a $199 compiler
This assumes that price confers quality. Unfortunately, it does not.
Should I expect your $1800+ compiler to produces 10x the code density of
Richard'$199-ish MSP430 compiler, then?
--
Paul Curtis, Rowley Associates Ltd http://www.rowley.co.uk
CrossWorks for MSP430, ARM, and (soon) Atmel AVR processors
Check before posting. I assume you're a newbie out of college given the
proud display of CEng. ;-) but perhaps I'm wrong, but still check
facts before posting.
> IAR welcomes trials -30 days free on www.iar.com. Then if in the UK
> ring IAR London for pricing.
>
> Same old thing really -you get what you pay for. Just last week I saw
> the IAR 2.xx compiler squeezing code into a 60K part ...ready for a
> production run of over 1 million units in an FDD conforming medical
> product.
Hmm. Ok, so why did IAR pull the MSP430 benchmarks from their site,
then, when comparing the IAR compiler to the competition? Perhaps
somebody actually produced smaller code? We'll never know... :-)
> If you are making 2 widgets in a shed then maybe even I would look at
> a $199 compiler
This assumes that price confers quality. Unfortunately, it does not.
Should I expect your $1800+ compiler to produces 10x the code density of
Richard'$199-ish MSP430 compiler, then?
--
Paul Curtis, Rowley Associates Ltd http://www.rowley.co.uk
CrossWorks for MSP430, ARM, and (soon) Atmel AVR processors
