I've been a reader for some time now and have been meaning to create an account. It was this article that has finally prompted me to do so.....
As a computer science major who is currently focusing a great deal on the electrical engineering portion of his curriculum and who dabbles extensively in digital circuits, I've gotten to know very well an important facet of the design process, "The Engineering Method". This idea is actually at the very heart of anything which is properly engineered.
I compel anyone who is reading this comment to google "The Engineering Method" before continuing.
Those who are familiar with proper engineering methodology should find concepts (if true) presented in this article deeply...deeply...troubling.
When engineering anything, be it a bridge or a digital circuit, certain steps are taken to ensure that the design is WITHOUT fault. Even if a device such as a microprocessor is incredibly complicated, you always insure the design is without fault before allowing it to be released. Would you design a car with the intention of fixing possible faults after production, or even a bridge?
That is simply bad engineering practice and to be quite honest, unethical. Such a device has no business being put on the market and could, in fact, present some very real dangers. Suppose such a device were installed in a life support system or even a car, a device with an ACCEPTED high potential for fault.
Further more, it's sacrificing the performance of a fixed function circuit with a slower PGA all for the sake of making up for poor engineering. This is in effect replacing a simple design with a more complicated one which is also poor engineering.
But enough of my ranting. I really must make a comment on the deeper issue I see here which is that of a non-engineer trying to solve an engineering problem. The person who is proposing this system is a computer scientist. A computer scientist specializes in solving problems using computers via software. It's my assumption that he saw an engineering problem (in this case, the complexity of designing digital circuits vs. cost of development time) and decided to try and solve it. It was only natural of his to do so via a software approach. I give him credit to making the effort however the resulting solution proposed is inappropriate. Again, I'm making assumptions here, but he is a scientist and not an engineer, and perhaps wasn't aware that such a solution caters to bad engineering.
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I've been a reader for some time now and have been meaning to create an account. It was this article that has finally prompted me to do so..... As a computer science major who is currently focusing a great deal on the electrical engineering portion of his curriculum and who dabbles extensively in digital circuits, I've gotten to know very well an important facet of the design process, "The Engineering Method". This idea is actually at the very heart of anything which is properly engineered. I compel anyone who is reading this comment to google "The Engineering Method" before continuing. Those who are familiar with proper engineering methodology should find concepts (if true) presented in this article deeply...deeply...troubling. When engineering anything, be it a bridge or a digital circuit, certain steps are taken to ensure that the design is WITHOUT fault. Even if a device such as a microprocessor is incredibly complicated, you always insure the design is without fault before allowing it to be released. Would you design a car with the intention of fixing possible faults after production, or even a bridge? That is simply bad engineering practice and to be quite honest, unethical. Such a device has no business being put on the market and could, in fact, present some very real dangers. Suppose such a device were installed in a life support system or even a car, a device with an ACCEPTED high potential for fault. Further more, it's sacrificing the performance of a fixed function circuit with a slower PGA all for the sake of making up for poor engineering. This is in effect replacing a simple design with a more complicated one which is also poor engineering. But enough of my ranting. I really must make a comment on the deeper issue I see here which is that of a non-engineer trying to solve an engineering problem. The person who is proposing this system is a computer scientist. A computer scientist specializes in solving problems using computers via software. It's my assumption that he saw an engineering problem (in this case, the complexity of designing digital circuits vs. cost of development time) and decided to try and solve it. It was only natural of his to do so via a software approach. I give him credit to making the effort however the resulting solution proposed is inappropriate. Again, I'm making assumptions here, but he is a scientist and not an engineer, and perhaps wasn't aware that such a solution caters to bad engineering.