As I remember it the McAfee aquisition is gone or going,
Thie foundies are about being competative on x86. Yeah, they do a bit of FPGL. They don't want any old chips, because the process is hightly tuned.
This is a big deal. It means they have given up on what they wanted to be their growth area in Atom for mobile.
Well suggested sources suggest they have been massaging their utilisation of those incredibly expensive fabs because the server x86 sales aren't what they want (because of virtuallisation for one thing).
Don't underestimate this - they are selling off the family silver.
If I'm Jewish enough for Hitler, I can join in.
A silly boy made a prank who has nasty beliefs. Nothing new here, move along. Just don't give them guns.
It used to be full of bugs, but they bought some of the best people.
Working on Webkit is a pain in the arse. Huge compile times, and no documentation worth talking about.
I wish more women pushed themselves into the intellectually hard jobs that they are capable of.
Childcare sometimes takes them away from the workplace (my career suffered when I was at home looking after the offspring).
We need to remind our employers that even if noone is indispensible, it is hard to find people who can make your product any good.
Just as paranoia doesn't mean people aren't out to get you, you can be a conspiracy theorists who hits on an idea that is true. Of course there won't be Nazis and Jewish communists in the cabal. (Disclaimer - some of my favorite communists are Jewish).
You don't pay taxes on radio in the UK. You pay a license fee to access TV channels. This also pays for the radio channels and broadcast to the world in loads of languages.
Most telly is rubblish, but the quality of the radio stations that are free from the BBC to the world are amazing. They are not the only great content, but blimey, I'd miss it if I had to rely on FOX etc. I also love a Canadian indie internet radio show, and an odd New York independant.
The World Service is fantastic. It is more informative and less biased than the (UK) domestic output - they talk to the world.
Oh, and when we pay for the telly, we get a lot of programmes that lots of the recipients want, and enough charming programmes that even appeal to me - DR Who, Sherlock, Documentaries, Silly nerdy quiz games. It is a lot less than any US cable subscription.
Not by a number-of-new-projects metric. They're popular in the "build a giant flagship product" world, but by sheer number of projects, I'd expect them to be pretty small. They're not the kind of language where you can just slap pieces together and do a job, like Ruby, Python, or Perl tend to advocate. Rather, they're elegant for larger projects. A comparison by lines of code would show the C family in a much more favorable light.
CSS is a programing language?
Yes. It's not Turing-complete, but it's still a language for defining instructions.
Bah.
You can slap projects together easily in c# and c++.
C++ is my favorite scripting language because it has good debuggers on all platforms.
Admittedly C++ isn't the language of choice for slapping together a webpage, on the other hand it can do that and outperform anything else.
C# and C++ have years of broad libraries behind them.
Choose the tool for the job, but don't neglect the ones that have real substance (I'm looking at you, PHP).
BTW, Github is no measure of what people are doing, even if it hosts some cool projects. Most of my stuff is for companies I work for, and you can't see it online, as is most code. The most important open source projects don't live there either.
If you didn't notice what good managers who appreciate the guys and gals who are doing the things that build the product, you don't know what bad managers are like. Or are dumb to all the other things that need to be done.
Documentation is ONE PART. It says what the design was supposed to be like.
Then you have errata and variations - when some of the hardware doesn't correspond to the documentation and acts differently.
Then you have examples - where someone shows you how to, e.g. draw a simple triangle using the documented opcodes and all of the boilerplate and set up necessary.
And then you have actual working code. Where you give away, for example, a complete implementation that conforms to a higher, standardised API and issues instructions to the hardware to perform those actions.
Out of all of those, documentation is the easiest thing to do. You can just (for example, just flicked through a PDF from that site) say that instruction X transposes a matrix. No idea of performance, whether that's the recommended way, what it contends with, how it works, whether the Intel drivers use that themselves, whether it's a legacy function, whether it has huge constraints on its use.
Without some code, it's all just fancy tech sheets. Sure, better than nothing, but a long way from actual co-operation. I'm not saying Intel don't co-operate in other areas, but documentation like this? That's the "quick reference" stuff for when your thousands of lines of existing example code don't act like you expect when you tweak them and you look up what that operand is supposed to do and how.
Put a hardware driver author in front of a documentation pack and a compiler, and tell him to write a driver, and he'll tell you to fuck off.
Put a hardware driver author in front of many working examples of device, with debug-level access, with example source (that he can't just copy due to licensing), errata, a direct line to cooperative hardware engineers AND this documentation and he'll start.
This is why I've never been that bothered by documentation releases, or even unmaintained source-drops. Supposedly Broadcom did something similar for the RPi's graphics chips. I think we're still waiting on anything that's not a binary driver there. And we have this sort of stuff for some ancient 3D graphics cards - it's just not as easy as reading it all and then sitting down to write a driver.
Intel, nVidia, ATI: Give us drivers with code that have no reliance on "black box" information/code, and we'll be happy. Until then, it's just lip-service. And you know that. That's why you don't release this kind of stuff for graphics chips, and nor does anyone else. Because you can drop this in someone's lap and years later STILL end up being pestered to the ends of the earth for an open-source driver (or assistance to help write one) because it doesn't exist.
Code is a lot more than writing things to perform a protocol described in the documentation. If only it were that easy.
It's been a few years since I worked in hardware, but even when you build it for a commercial company; not open source, you don't get the things you (poster) think are important.
In the past I found AMD far more helpful than Intel, and I was building high end workstations then (Motorola and MIPS based, but lots of AMD chips). MIPS and AMD at least gave you the documentation for free if they thought you were serious: that was LOTS of thick books. Sometimes they helpd you figure out if things didn't work properly.
If you are in a small company, even when you buy a reference design kit you don't get any help. you have to work it out for yourself, even if there are some errata sheets. No properly working drivers for the reference design. No source.
These days I'm glad I have a little company in China making our boards, that while being a bit clumsy are very fast to fix things. Things get broken as quickly.
I'm even more glad that there are less complier bugs than I had to deal with on Microsoft compliers, or GNU on obscure ARM architectures I tore my hair out over.
I am 46 and have been programming for money since a young teenager, but I studied electronics.
I have made my own computer boards from chips, and done a bit of designing with bitslice (make your own cpu from complex chips). I am competent or better in a few languages. I am starting to appreciate that C# is better than Java in many ways, but I prefer C++. A bit of javascript or phthon doesn't scare me; I'd have to take a weekend off to remember Lisp or FORTH properly.
Right now I am cleaning up the mess from developers from China. They have done very clever things, but also very broken things - that hang the whole computer. Too much doing the latest cool thing, not enough KISS and experience. It isn't that they aren't smart people, it is because outsourcing makes them not care that it gets the job done - you can get the same experience at home.
The Chinese and Indian outsourcing is getting more expensive. Good developers who are close to what matter is why I still feel secure in my job. It isn't paying a superstar salary, but it is decent.
This is a small company. I hope if I make it work as well as I can I'll have a team under me again. The sales guys here seem good - you need them to grow the company, and to have a mutual trust with them.
I have a degree in electronics. In the UK. Unfortunately it doesn't get professional status as things like law do. Nobody cares what institution you are affiliated to.
I am more a software person now - C++ and maybe c#. I'd prefer microcode to x86 assembler. Java seems to be getting worse than VB6.
I say I play with computers for a living, or just I write software.
Slashdot Mirror
XP embedded doesn't get security updates. Because it is pick-and-mix, windows update doesn't work. Trying to make a Sasser fix was VERY hard work.
Blame it on letting AOL in.
Desktop windows is down the pan, but dumping c# for java is madness.
How does anyone get any work done if they are constantly playing with desktops.
The worst case was someone who was meant to be helping me in the late 90s who was obsessed with enlightenment, He didn't produce anything useful.
Personally I'm OK with windows 7 at home, but expecting to go Mint, nothing scary to someone who knew UNIX before DOS (I did start early).
As I remember it the McAfee aquisition is gone or going,
Thie foundies are about being competative on x86. Yeah, they do a bit of FPGL. They don't want any old chips, because the process is hightly tuned.
This is a big deal. It means they have given up on what they wanted to be their growth area in Atom for mobile.
Well suggested sources suggest they have been massaging their utilisation of those incredibly expensive fabs because the server x86 sales aren't what they want (because of virtuallisation for one thing).
Don't underestimate this - they are selling off the family silver.
If there are riots, it won't be from the majority. They might cause more harm than any Muslims have in Merka.
If I'm Jewish enough for Hitler, I can join in. A silly boy made a prank who has nasty beliefs. Nothing new here, move along. Just don't give them guns.
The compiler only targets x86, used to do arm too, look at embedded compilers if you want to see some horrible bugs.
It used to be full of bugs, but they bought some of the best people. Working on Webkit is a pain in the arse. Huge compile times, and no documentation worth talking about.
Except Google etc. drop products all the time. Pebble has only one trick.
I wish more women pushed themselves into the intellectually hard jobs that they are capable of. Childcare sometimes takes them away from the workplace (my career suffered when I was at home looking after the offspring). We need to remind our employers that even if noone is indispensible, it is hard to find people who can make your product any good.
Just as paranoia doesn't mean people aren't out to get you, you can be a conspiracy theorists who hits on an idea that is true. Of course there won't be Nazis and Jewish communists in the cabal. (Disclaimer - some of my favorite communists are Jewish).
If the black women are just being less prissy about it, good for them. And yes.. boobies, but not the point.
You don't pay taxes on radio in the UK. You pay a license fee to access TV channels. This also pays for the radio channels and broadcast to the world in loads of languages. Most telly is rubblish, but the quality of the radio stations that are free from the BBC to the world are amazing. They are not the only great content, but blimey, I'd miss it if I had to rely on FOX etc. I also love a Canadian indie internet radio show, and an odd New York independant. The World Service is fantastic. It is more informative and less biased than the (UK) domestic output - they talk to the world. Oh, and when we pay for the telly, we get a lot of programmes that lots of the recipients want, and enough charming programmes that even appeal to me - DR Who, Sherlock, Documentaries, Silly nerdy quiz games. It is a lot less than any US cable subscription.
Yep C++, C, Objective-C, and C# are not popular?
Not by a number-of-new-projects metric. They're popular in the "build a giant flagship product" world, but by sheer number of projects, I'd expect them to be pretty small. They're not the kind of language where you can just slap pieces together and do a job, like Ruby, Python, or Perl tend to advocate. Rather, they're elegant for larger projects. A comparison by lines of code would show the C family in a much more favorable light.
CSS is a programing language?
Yes. It's not Turing-complete, but it's still a language for defining instructions.
Bah.
You can slap projects together easily in c# and c++.
C++ is my favorite scripting language because it has good debuggers on all platforms.
Admittedly C++ isn't the language of choice for slapping together a webpage, on the other hand it can do that and outperform anything else.
C# and C++ have years of broad libraries behind them.
Choose the tool for the job, but don't neglect the ones that have real substance (I'm looking at you, PHP).
BTW, Github is no measure of what people are doing, even if it hosts some cool projects. Most of my stuff is for companies I work for, and you can't see it online, as is most code. The most important open source projects don't live there either.
Rob.
Bad idea to use HC12 with GCC. It never had proper support (thinking way back). The commercial compilers were expensive though.
If you didn't notice what good managers who appreciate the guys and gals who are doing the things that build the product, you don't know what bad managers are like. Or are dumb to all the other things that need to be done.
Best scripting language there is with a few libraries and a debugger. I would shell out to other peograms on occasion.
Documentation is ONE PART. It says what the design was supposed to be like.
Then you have errata and variations - when some of the hardware doesn't correspond to the documentation and acts differently.
Then you have examples - where someone shows you how to, e.g. draw a simple triangle using the documented opcodes and all of the boilerplate and set up necessary.
And then you have actual working code. Where you give away, for example, a complete implementation that conforms to a higher, standardised API and issues instructions to the hardware to perform those actions.
Out of all of those, documentation is the easiest thing to do. You can just (for example, just flicked through a PDF from that site) say that instruction X transposes a matrix. No idea of performance, whether that's the recommended way, what it contends with, how it works, whether the Intel drivers use that themselves, whether it's a legacy function, whether it has huge constraints on its use.
Without some code, it's all just fancy tech sheets. Sure, better than nothing, but a long way from actual co-operation. I'm not saying Intel don't co-operate in other areas, but documentation like this? That's the "quick reference" stuff for when your thousands of lines of existing example code don't act like you expect when you tweak them and you look up what that operand is supposed to do and how.
Put a hardware driver author in front of a documentation pack and a compiler, and tell him to write a driver, and he'll tell you to fuck off.
Put a hardware driver author in front of many working examples of device, with debug-level access, with example source (that he can't just copy due to licensing), errata, a direct line to cooperative hardware engineers AND this documentation and he'll start.
This is why I've never been that bothered by documentation releases, or even unmaintained source-drops. Supposedly Broadcom did something similar for the RPi's graphics chips. I think we're still waiting on anything that's not a binary driver there. And we have this sort of stuff for some ancient 3D graphics cards - it's just not as easy as reading it all and then sitting down to write a driver.
Intel, nVidia, ATI: Give us drivers with code that have no reliance on "black box" information/code, and we'll be happy. Until then, it's just lip-service. And you know that. That's why you don't release this kind of stuff for graphics chips, and nor does anyone else. Because you can drop this in someone's lap and years later STILL end up being pestered to the ends of the earth for an open-source driver (or assistance to help write one) because it doesn't exist.
Code is a lot more than writing things to perform a protocol described in the documentation. If only it were that easy.
It's been a few years since I worked in hardware, but even when you build it for a commercial company; not open source, you don't get the things you (poster) think are important.
In the past I found AMD far more helpful than Intel, and I was building high end workstations then (Motorola and MIPS based, but lots of AMD chips). MIPS and AMD at least gave you the documentation for free if they thought you were serious: that was LOTS of thick books. Sometimes they helpd you figure out if things didn't work properly.
If you are in a small company, even when you buy a reference design kit you don't get any help. you have to work it out for yourself, even if there are some errata sheets. No properly working drivers for the reference design. No source.
These days I'm glad I have a little company in China making our boards, that while being a bit clumsy are very fast to fix things. Things get broken as quickly.
I'm even more glad that there are less complier bugs than I had to deal with on Microsoft compliers, or GNU on obscure ARM architectures I tore my hair out over.
Luckily I have a lot of hair.
Rob.
I am 46 and have been programming for money since a young teenager, but I studied electronics. I have made my own computer boards from chips, and done a bit of designing with bitslice (make your own cpu from complex chips). I am competent or better in a few languages. I am starting to appreciate that C# is better than Java in many ways, but I prefer C++. A bit of javascript or phthon doesn't scare me; I'd have to take a weekend off to remember Lisp or FORTH properly. Right now I am cleaning up the mess from developers from China. They have done very clever things, but also very broken things - that hang the whole computer. Too much doing the latest cool thing, not enough KISS and experience. It isn't that they aren't smart people, it is because outsourcing makes them not care that it gets the job done - you can get the same experience at home. The Chinese and Indian outsourcing is getting more expensive. Good developers who are close to what matter is why I still feel secure in my job. It isn't paying a superstar salary, but it is decent. This is a small company. I hope if I make it work as well as I can I'll have a team under me again. The sales guys here seem good - you need them to grow the company, and to have a mutual trust with them.
I have a degree in electronics. In the UK. Unfortunately it doesn't get professional status as things like law do. Nobody cares what institution you are affiliated to. I am more a software person now - C++ and maybe c#. I'd prefer microcode to x86 assembler. Java seems to be getting worse than VB6. I say I play with computers for a living, or just I write software.