This article suggests that advertisements should be *more* intrusive, but his examples directly contradict the point. What bothers many people most about pop-up ads and their ilk is not that it requires them to view the content, it's the techniques used such as auto-reopening when you click to close, or opening tens or hundreds of windows. As the author correctly states, many people don't mind watching the pre-commercial on sites like cnn or hulu. The point isn't that those are *really* intrusive but that an advertisement done well in a clearly opt-in way is tolerated. As with the proxy sites he's a proponent of, the key to advertisement is NOT intrusion, it's doing the ad well and making it a clearly opt-in system that makes it good.
When I go to hulu or cnn or whatever I have a clear choice - use the site and tolerate ads (assuming the nice model of not using ad-blockers to bypass them), or simply choose not to use the site. With the kind of intrusive pop-ups that the author talks about and suggests creating, it removes the opt-in aspect. Where there isn't opt-in, users WILL get mad at the advertisers and negatively impact them overall... so if they really want better, higher paying ads, the answer is to create good ads, pay for them in targeted spots that actually cover the market, and make sure that the users have essentially agreed to see the ad in exchange for the service. None of that sounds like it *needs* to be intrusive.
As other people have pointed out, the important thing is that neither Verilog or VHDL are sequential programming languages... They are hardware description languages, or could be thought of as parallel programming languages or simulation languages. In any case, students will make the biggest mistakes by: 1. Thinking that it's just like C/C++/Java/whatever, and 2.Using features of either language (which are both quite powerful), but that are unsynthesizeable.
Thus, an important part of any course on HDL should have a heavy focus on synthesizeable code, with many iterations of seeing not just the "right" way to do things, but why that is the right way and the alternatives wouldn't produce the same (presumably good) hardware as the alternative ways that look or seem similar.
There are many other languages to consider as well that may or may not end up being used widely in industry.. a sampling is...
SystemC
HandelC
BluSpec
Plus, there are many C-to-Verilog, C-to-VHDL or C-to-HW compilers out there that try to jump from sequential code with pragmas etc. to the HW....
In general, I would suggest thinking of this not as a language course, but as a hardware design course where the tools used happen to include a new language (for the students). It would be easy to concentrate on language syntax and end up with students that know syntax, but not how to make good HW descriptions....
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This article suggests that advertisements should be *more* intrusive, but his examples directly contradict the point. What bothers many people most about pop-up ads and their ilk is not that it requires them to view the content, it's the techniques used such as auto-reopening when you click to close, or opening tens or hundreds of windows. As the author correctly states, many people don't mind watching the pre-commercial on sites like cnn or hulu. The point isn't that those are *really* intrusive but that an advertisement done well in a clearly opt-in way is tolerated. As with the proxy sites he's a proponent of, the key to advertisement is NOT intrusion, it's doing the ad well and making it a clearly opt-in system that makes it good. When I go to hulu or cnn or whatever I have a clear choice - use the site and tolerate ads (assuming the nice model of not using ad-blockers to bypass them), or simply choose not to use the site. With the kind of intrusive pop-ups that the author talks about and suggests creating, it removes the opt-in aspect. Where there isn't opt-in, users WILL get mad at the advertisers and negatively impact them overall... so if they really want better, higher paying ads, the answer is to create good ads, pay for them in targeted spots that actually cover the market, and make sure that the users have essentially agreed to see the ad in exchange for the service. None of that sounds like it *needs* to be intrusive.
As other people have pointed out, the important thing is that neither Verilog or VHDL are sequential programming languages... They are hardware description languages, or could be thought of as parallel programming languages or simulation languages. In any case, students will make the biggest mistakes by: 1. Thinking that it's just like C/C++/Java/whatever, and 2.Using features of either language (which are both quite powerful), but that are unsynthesizeable.
Thus, an important part of any course on HDL should have a heavy focus on synthesizeable code, with many iterations of seeing not just the "right" way to do things, but why that is the right way and the alternatives wouldn't produce the same (presumably good) hardware as the alternative ways that look or seem similar.
There are many other languages to consider as well that may or may not end up being used widely in industry.. a sampling is...
SystemC
HandelC
BluSpec
Plus, there are many C-to-Verilog, C-to-VHDL or C-to-HW compilers out there that try to jump from sequential code with pragmas etc. to the HW....
In general, I would suggest thinking of this not as a language course, but as a hardware design course where the tools used happen to include a new language (for the students). It would be easy to concentrate on language syntax and end up with students that know syntax, but not how to make good HW descriptions....