Actually, I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, or at least a related topic: what object-oriented language works best in an embedded environment?
My first answer is "none", as embedded systems usually have more stringent requirements for speed and size. Also, most embedded programmers I know cannot do object-oriented programming well, even without the constraints I just described. (I could relate quite a few horror stories about that EE who just learned C++ and was let loose upon an unsuspecting source base. Nightmare for the brave, that.)
The top two choices are C++ and Java. I have bones to pick with each. C++ is ridiculously complex, and isn't even a real OO language, what with the crappy extensions provided for run-time type identification. At best, C++ is object-based, and tries to use very abstruse strategies (such as templating) for generic programming.
Furthermore, many of the language's idioms rely on exception handling. However, throwing an exception in an embedded system is usually a no-no due to speed constraints; embedded programmers prefer to have control over the flow of execution, and are loath to trusting opaque run-time management of any kind. And of course, exceptions are off-limits in device drivers.
Java has its own problems with the requirement of a virtual machine. The C++ run-time is too small to allow for rapid application development, but Java goes to the other extreme entirely. Admittedly, I know very little about Java's use in the embedded space, but how exactly is garbage collection controlled in the embedded world? How do Embedded Java systems avoid, for example, missing a device interrupt for the sake of cleaning house?
Objective-C seems to be just the right mix: real object-orientation, backwards compatibility with C, and a very small run-time library to support its extra functionality. And it's a breeze to learn, especially when compared to the other choices.
So has anyone thought of using Obj-C in an embedded system? Is it a viable, attractive alternative?
I'm old enough to remember the Johnson administration, and the phrase "guns and butter" to describe gov't spending back then. You know: guns for the Cold War (and the hot war in Vietnam) and butter for the domestic spending.
It seems today that "compassionate conservatism" is increasing spending, but not for the masses as in days of yore. (That Medicare reform bill that was passed a few weeks ago? The only winner was Big Pharma; it was an early Xmas present to Glaxo et. al.)
So, average Americans get fake benefits from the outrageous spending, while we funnel money into Iraq. (Iraq won't be another Vietnam, by the way. It will be worse: the US now has its own version of the Gaza Strip, only one about the size of California.)
Folks, this is "guns and margarine": real defense spending; tax breaks, patronage, and corporate gifts masquerading as domestic spending; and a lot of red ink that our grandchildren will never be able to mop up.
Don't get excited about the plans for NASA. The only thing you should consider is that somebody is trying to buy you.. with your grandchildren's money.
Sigh. The brains behind The Young Oneswas writer Ben Elton. Not that I'm dissing Mr. Mayall, or any of the other actors on the show, mind you -- all of them were great. But Elton gets most of the writing credit (with a little help from Alexi Sayle for his "Balowski family" pieces).
That said, I think I'll torture the wife tonight by renting the Young Ones DVD.
Eh! Last time I looked Alan lived in Swansea, in Wales, you know the United Kingdom?
Oh. Didn't know that. I was under the impression that he worked (did work? was still working? may have worked?) for Red Hat. And it's way more convenient to work on networking stack and kernel internals near an engineering corps, like, say, the one in the RH corporate HQ here in Raleigh.
(I know, I know, open source has a distributed workflow architecture, no need for that, blah blah blah. SneakerNet still has its advantages tho'.)
Despite appearances to the contratry, we have not yet picked the country up and moved it across the Atlantic to become another State...
Now, now, no need for that, just look at Hawaii (we even built the Hawaiians interstate highways).
If that doesn't suit, hey, we can always tow...
I'm curious as to which B-school Alan will be attending. Will it be in the Raleigh/Durham area?
Full time? Part time/evenings/weekends?
Available local options for the MBA degree are:
NC State University -- just re-branded their Master's in Scientific Mgmt. degree to an MBA. Very good technically-oriented degree, but the program is very new. Their degree is great for getting a job in NC, but I'm not sure how it'll play outside the Tar Heel State.
UNC (main campus at Chapel Hill) -- consistently one of the top 25 programs in the USA, usually ranked by media outlets as one of the top ten. Very well-known. A bit pricier than NC State though.
Duke -- arguably one of the most prestigious in the States, usually ranked just after Harvard, Stanford, and possibly Dartmouth and Yale. Confers god-like status, but often requires a second or third mortgage to be financed.
Wake Forest U. in Winston-Salem -- a bit of a kick from the Triangle area. Don't know much else about their MBA program though.
I just started the evening program at UNC myself (the wife is one year into it). It'll be a very intense two years, but it'll also be worth every last dollar and minute.
Oh well. If you're in Chapel Hill, Alan, show up and say Hi to the evening class of 2005. Once we meet, I'll gladly introduce you once I recover from all the fainting.
This was the exact case at my last permanent job. We the developers were encourage to use whatever we wanted; our tools were Linux-based anyway. If you wanted Winders, fine, but you had to know how log onto a central Linux build server, build your system, and submit changes via CVS.
That was it. You could use Cygwin if you liked on your local machine. Or not.
For a while I had Linux and MacOS X going on the corporate LAN. Our sysadmin was Linux-literate, and didn't give a shit so long as you didn't do anything stupid, like leaving 44 bazmillion ports open and creating an open-relay, etc. etc. You did your own support wherever applicable if you had Linux, but the whole culture of the place was GNU-centric. Hell, the development "VPN" was an SSH server (on another continent); Linux folks could work at home while the Windows point-and-drool types suffered.
Last I heard, after the company was acquired (and many developers like yours truly thrown out), all developers were marched towards Windows, as part of a larger program to crush any and all employee morale into a fine dust. So very sad.
Oh well. It's late. Time to go have a fond memory and a good cry *sniff*.
RIAA also plans to sue a little girl in Beaverton Oregon for recording, "Mary had a Little Lamb".
This is closer to the truth than you think. ASCAP tried to sue scouting organizations for using campfire songs without permission of the copyright holder. No kidding.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently, or at least a related topic: what object-oriented language works best in an embedded environment?
My first answer is "none", as embedded systems usually have more stringent requirements for speed and size. Also, most embedded programmers I know cannot do object-oriented programming well, even without the constraints I just described. (I could relate quite a few horror stories about that EE who just learned C++ and was let loose upon an unsuspecting source base. Nightmare for the brave, that.)
The top two choices are C++ and Java. I have bones to pick with each. C++ is ridiculously complex, and isn't even a real OO language, what with the crappy extensions provided for run-time type identification. At best, C++ is object-based, and tries to use very abstruse strategies (such as templating) for generic programming.
Furthermore, many of the language's idioms rely on exception handling. However, throwing an exception in an embedded system is usually a no-no due to speed constraints; embedded programmers prefer to have control over the flow of execution, and are loath to trusting opaque run-time management of any kind. And of course, exceptions are off-limits in device drivers.
Java has its own problems with the requirement of a virtual machine. The C++ run-time is too small to allow for rapid application development, but Java goes to the other extreme entirely. Admittedly, I know very little about Java's use in the embedded space, but how exactly is garbage collection controlled in the embedded world? How do Embedded Java systems avoid, for example, missing a device interrupt for the sake of cleaning house?
Objective-C seems to be just the right mix: real object-orientation, backwards compatibility with C, and a very small run-time library to support its extra functionality. And it's a breeze to learn, especially when compared to the other choices.
So has anyone thought of using Obj-C in an embedded system? Is it a viable, attractive alternative?
Which would you pick?
My best so far:
Worst so far:
Biggest Disappointment:
28 Days Later - a great idea, but Danny Boyle misdirects the whole thing. I wish George Romero was at the helm of this one instead.
And the American ending is awful. (It's almost as much of a let-down as that last, weepy scene in Schindler's List.)
*sigh* Ah, what might have been...
Not seen yet:
I used to use vanilla or chocolate soy milk with my plain cereal
[snip]
It made plain Wheaties much more enjoyable to eat.
Um, it might help if you ate your cereal with some liquid other than primer.
Lindows should change its name in Sweden and Finland to "BHS" (for "Butt-head Scandinavians").
I'm old enough to remember the Johnson administration, and the phrase "guns and butter" to describe gov't spending back then. You know: guns for the Cold War (and the hot war in Vietnam) and butter for the domestic spending.
It seems today that "compassionate conservatism" is increasing spending, but not for the masses as in days of yore. (That Medicare reform bill that was passed a few weeks ago? The only winner was Big Pharma; it was an early Xmas present to Glaxo et. al.)
So, average Americans get fake benefits from the outrageous spending, while we funnel money into Iraq. (Iraq won't be another Vietnam, by the way. It will be worse: the US now has its own version of the Gaza Strip, only one about the size of California.)
Folks, this is "guns and margarine": real defense spending; tax breaks, patronage, and corporate gifts masquerading as domestic spending; and a lot of red ink that our grandchildren will never be able to mop up.
Don't get excited about the plans for NASA. The only thing you should consider is that somebody is trying to buy you.. with your grandchildren's money.
No.
That was easy...
Well, last season was a disaster...
Um, no, they were influenced by citizens. Fifty million pissed-off citizens.
If we're worried about killing off industries that employ, hey, let's legalize heroin trafficking. Plenty of folks gainfully employed there.
It's a shame that the FTC needs help from Congress to carry out its mission, actually.
Everyone knows that this could mean the end off telemarketing as an economical way of doing [sic] bussiness.
Why do you think we all signed up for it?
While many of us don't like people selling us things we don't like but thats capiatalism you know.
I have some Viagra substitutes to sell you, along with an opportunity to move money out of Nigeria. What's your phone number?
Maybe it should be titled "Red Harangue"...
Sigh. The brains behind The Young Oneswas writer Ben Elton. Not that I'm dissing Mr. Mayall, or any of the other actors on the show, mind you -- all of them were great. But Elton gets most of the writing credit (with a little help from Alexi Sayle for his "Balowski family" pieces).
That said, I think I'll torture the wife tonight by renting the Young Ones DVD.
Woohoo! I'm stoked!
But y'all forgot another reason why this rocks: the Goon Show!
This was the radio show that inspired the Pythons and a LOT of great absurdist British comedy.
Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers available to the rest of us! Yeehaw!
Oh. Didn't know that. I was under the impression that he worked (did work? was still working? may have worked?) for Red Hat. And it's way more convenient to work on networking stack and kernel internals near an engineering corps, like, say, the one in the RH corporate HQ here in Raleigh.
(I know, I know, open source has a distributed workflow architecture, no need for that, blah blah blah. SneakerNet still has its advantages tho'.)
Despite appearances to the contratry, we have not yet picked the country up and moved it across the Atlantic to become another State...
Now, now, no need for that, just look at Hawaii (we even built the Hawaiians interstate highways). If that doesn't suit, hey, we can always tow...
I'm curious as to which B-school Alan will be attending. Will it be in the Raleigh/Durham area? Full time? Part time/evenings/weekends?
Available local options for the MBA degree are:
I just started the evening program at UNC myself (the wife is one year into it). It'll be a very intense two years, but it'll also be worth every last dollar and minute.
Oh well. If you're in Chapel Hill, Alan, show up and say Hi to the evening class of 2005. Once we meet, I'll gladly introduce you once I recover from all the fainting.
This was the exact case at my last permanent job. We the developers were encourage to use whatever we wanted; our tools were Linux-based anyway. If you wanted Winders, fine, but you had to know how log onto a central Linux build server, build your system, and submit changes via CVS.
That was it. You could use Cygwin if you liked on your local machine. Or not.
For a while I had Linux and MacOS X going on the corporate LAN. Our sysadmin was Linux-literate, and didn't give a shit so long as you didn't do anything stupid, like leaving 44 bazmillion ports open and creating an open-relay, etc. etc. You did your own support wherever applicable if you had Linux, but the whole culture of the place was GNU-centric. Hell, the development "VPN" was an SSH server (on another continent); Linux folks could work at home while the Windows point-and-drool types suffered.
Last I heard, after the company was acquired (and many developers like yours truly thrown out), all developers were marched towards Windows, as part of a larger program to crush any and all employee morale into a fine dust. So very sad.
Oh well. It's late. Time to go have a fond memory and a good cry *sniff*.
This is closer to the truth than you think. ASCAP tried to sue scouting organizations for using campfire songs without permission of the copyright holder. No kidding.