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Where Are Tomorrow's Embedded Developers?

Posted by kdawson on from the not-like-embedded-reporters dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a similar vein to the previous discussion about the New York professors taking Java to task for damaging Computer Science education, Mike Anderson of the PTR group wonders why it's so hard to find good embedded developers these days. 'As for today's CS programs, it seems that long gone are the computer architecture classes, writing code in assembly language (or even C at this point) and engineering software economics. In fact, a large number of CS majors apparently believe that everything can be implemented in a virtual machine and that both memory and [CPU] cycles are infinite.'"

3 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. I've Heard of That Machine! by chromatic · · Score: 5, Funny

    In fact, a large number of CS majors apparently believe that everything can be implemented in a virtual machine and that both memory and [CPU] cycles are infinite.

    Good for them; Alan Turing believed it too.

    --
    how to invest, a novice's guide
  2. Re:College Classes by secondstory756 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I have to agree. I'm a computer engineer at the University of Illinois. It's the computer engineers that are doing the lower level development. I've had extensive systems programming (in assembly and c) and every CE here makes both an OS and a 16-bit processor. CS students don't see that stuff unless they elect to take it.


    I haven't seen a speck of java (or even c++) in my ECE (Electrical & computer engineering) courses, but that's all I've used in my CS courses. Furthermore, I have a lot of friends in CS that know very little about what the actual computers are doing on a bitwise level. (I had to help one of them work on bit masking last weekend.)

    If you're looking for embedded people don't look at CS, look at CE.

  3. Re:College Classes by turbidostato · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "It's the computer engineers that are doing the lower level development."

    Of course!

    "a large number of CS majors apparently believe that [...] both memory and [CPU] cycles are infinite.'"

    That's the difference between a computer ENGINEER and a computer SCIENTIST. After all, complete turing machines *do* have infinite memory and cpu cycles. /me fastly ducks away