GEOS was the bomb. Put my dad's 386 to shame, and I never really used anything as good until I got hooked on the shiny new PowerPC Macs at elementary school. I had graphical word processing, paint, and the original flight simulator by Nova Logic running years before Windows 3.0 was a glimmer in Bill Gates's eye.
Kickass Internet access may be $21/month, but then again mortgages are now multi-generational. Easy come, easy go. Consider your TCO for living in Japan, then get back to me.;-)
While I agree that there are many qualities that make programmers stand out from the field of engineering, if we ever want to *think* about writing real code that doesn't break, to build OS's and applications of any real quality, the process of software development needs to be treated like any other domain of engineering. Just ask Carnegie Mellon- most software houses in the US are total CF's. I consider this fact to be total bullshit. We need discipline in this field if we're ever going to produce quality systems. So yes, I would say programmers should be considered engineers. Now whether that implies they should have to recieve formal certification like many CivE's do is a completely different story.
I don't wish to take away the art and creativity from the process by "engineerizing" it, I just think we need to do a much better job at writing it.
I would have to agree with Zero__Kelvin-- no sound card is going to give any kind of decent signal. If you need an oscilliscope, you'd be doing yourself a disfavor by trying to use the horrible, bandwidth limited DSP in your soundcard. At the very least get a dedicated card by National Instruments or a used Tektronix/Wavetek/HP/whatever Oscope off of eBay for cheap. An analog scope will give you better resolution anyhow, and you'll thank yourself in the longrun.
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GEOS was the bomb. Put my dad's 386 to shame, and I never really used anything as good until I got hooked on the shiny new PowerPC Macs at elementary school. I had graphical word processing, paint, and the original flight simulator by Nova Logic running years before Windows 3.0 was a glimmer in Bill Gates's eye.
I have Univac manuals propping up a tower UPS. Does that count? I could toss a few memory cores in there to make it official.
Kickass Internet access may be $21/month, but then again mortgages are now multi-generational. Easy come, easy go. Consider your TCO for living in Japan, then get back to me. ;-)
While I agree that there are many qualities that make programmers stand out from the field of engineering, if we ever want to *think* about writing real code that doesn't break, to build OS's and applications of any real quality, the process of software development needs to be treated like any other domain of engineering. Just ask Carnegie Mellon- most software houses in the US are total CF's. I consider this fact to be total bullshit. We need discipline in this field if we're ever going to produce quality systems. So yes, I would say programmers should be considered engineers. Now whether that implies they should have to recieve formal certification like many CivE's do is a completely different story.
I don't wish to take away the art and creativity from the process by "engineerizing" it, I just think we need to do a much better job at writing it.
My $.02 as a computer engineer from Purdue.
First post!
Sorry, had to...
almost i guess
I would have to agree with Zero__Kelvin-- no sound card is going to give any kind of decent signal. If you need an oscilliscope, you'd be doing yourself a disfavor by trying to use the horrible, bandwidth limited DSP in your soundcard. At the very least get a dedicated card by National Instruments or a used Tektronix/Wavetek/HP/whatever Oscope off of eBay for cheap. An analog scope will give you better resolution anyhow, and you'll thank yourself in the longrun.