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Why Developers Are Important To the Drone Industry (sdtimes.com)
dmleonard618 writes: There is a new market that industry leaders think developers should take advantage of: Drones. While drones are becoming more and more popular, the industry is just opening up and it needs developers to take it to the next level. "Drones are the next mobile," said Thomas Haun, a VP from PrecisionHawk. Haun went on to explain that like mobile, drones are going to completely change how we go about our lives. And if that doesn't attract developers, COO from Skyward added: "How often do you get to invent a new industry?"
No they're not. I've never had a smartphone crash on my head, break through my window or spy on me from above. And the air space is regulated in most countries, so drones aren't anywhere near the next mobile.
Drones have their place, but not in the hands of everyone.
Drones are by no means the next cellphone. I know that you have to come up with a new gadget, trinket or toy every other year so people buy some new crap once the former market is saturated, but the very LAST thing this world needs is a bunch of morons who think they can program writing stuff for tools that can literally hit you over the head if handled improperly!
Find another toy to make it the Next Best Thing, ok?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I like the concept of drones.
I write software. Daily. I've worked with a lot of software writers. I've worked with a lot of good ones, and even more bad ones. The concept of "more people writing drone software" scares the living hell out of me.
We have "the brightest minds" working on automotive software and seem to have problems getting that right and now we want these same people (Read: My comment is sarcastic. Automotive software is shameful. Or, rather, its design is.) writing drone software? No, thanks.
I am ALL FOR open design. I am all for people being able to write what they want. But I am not all for mass production of flying objects with crappy code. And the worst part is, I can see it now: "New, in 2016, DRONE-X runs JAVA! Calling all JAVA Devs!" and then, "New, 3rd QT of 2016: DRONE-XX3 runs Windows 10D (drone)! Calling all MS metro devs!"
Please, be smart about this and do not ruin it like everything else is being ruined, software wise. Be mindful and be smart. Leave hardware and software design to the pros, not the children out of HS who took half a semester of "Intro to JAVA" and must be a super-star!
On a side note, this is a great opportunity for senior programmers to teach the new kids (Stay off my lawn!) how to properly code and how to be mindful of security practices. But keep their code out of the sky. And off our roads. For now.
Why software is important to hardware. (I think we had that one figured out decades before the first computer.)
Drones are not the next mobile, but they might find an unexpected niche and surprise us.
Drones are by no means the next cellphone.
Low cost drones have been around for 1o years, and while they have niche uses and are a popular toy, they have not approached anything close to mobile phone adoption rates when in a similar period after they were introduced. We are talking many orders of magnitude in difference
I don't even think I would devote my time and skill to a company, even after a lawyer has went over every bit of the contract. The liability, and ethical (and moral, I assume) reasoning alone prevents me from wanting to.
Don't get me wrong - I think they're cool ideas, in the right hands. But as a mass commodity and spy usage really gets on my nerves. We cannot get code right for automobiles, on the ground. How can we get code right for drones in the sky?
"Developers" implies testing and experimentation, and it's getting more and more difficult to fly a drone in public anymore. How is that supposed to work?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There are delevelopers taking it to the next level. They are the same ones that have got it to where it is now - like autonomous plans that find people people lost the wilderness and drop a rescue package beside them.
But maybe he is talking about a different species of developer entirely - the one that publish most of the crap found in app stores. When I think "developer", I think of a person who enjoys creating new things from code. That is the sort of developer who is driving openpilot, which is were most of the innovation is happening right now. The developer he is apparently talking about prioritises money - they are people who constantly looking to make the most money in the shortest amount of time from the least amount of code. A different animal entirely. We will need them later to find all the useful things that can be done with drones. But right now it's a struggle to make the thing work at all, and for that you need real developers.
Real developers? Sorry. That was a bad choice of words. What is a socially acceptable word for people who prefer technology to money, or indeed people. Nerds maybe? Call us what we like, were are far too busy having fun with computers to notice.
...a developer working on something that will stop the engines of a drone in flight and I'll invest in it in a heartbeat!
Say drone now and you get the image of either silent military killers remotely controlled or quad or hexacopter buzzing around.
The military drones will get more autonomous and even more scary. We haven't hit a real arms race in remote killing machines. It will come.
The copter drones aren't going to fly (excuse the pun) long term. The noise that comes from the drones as the beat the air into submission is not scalable to many of them. I'm a tech nerd, but I'm not going to enjoy having continual buzzing. Drones for particular uses (search and rescue, mapping, task specific data gathering and so on) will likely win.
Our day to day life won't be from drones as we know them. The drones of the future will probably be either silently flying (bird like?) or on the ground, or underground. They will increasingly take the "need human agility, but not human smarts". Deliveries to an extent are an obvious area.
Absolutely. And it does prevent it. I would turn down any opportunity from an automotive agency.
Japan is probably developing tentacle drones as we speak, for you-know-what.
I wonder if coding is like other activities in school where everyone gets a trophy regardless of how good they actually are.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling