14
hitko
2y

Not entirely dev related, but...

I'm getting tired of (electrical, mechanical) engineers complaining about HW limitations like "oh this board only has 12 KB of flash memory" or "I can't make this thing move smoother because my CPU is only 16 MHz" Bitch, you can spend $500 on 3 servo motors, but you can't afford to pay extra $5 to get a board with better specs to control them?

Comments
  • 5
    Aren't CPUs like the cheapest part of those systems nowadays?

    Like I remember reading that in 3D printing, the "old 8-Bit boards" are more expensive than newer 32 Bit ARM boards.
  • 5
    @LotsOfCaffeine Exactly, for $20 you can get pretty much any kind of general-purpose SOC board nowadays, with proper 32-bit ARM cores and whatnot.
  • 9
    And then we have web based desktop apps that use at least 500mb of ram for nothing
  • 2
    Kinda weird, I typcially go for a bit more powerful than i think that I need so I'm sure to have no problems like that. Then again some people also have the "The answer is arduino now, what is the question" mentality
  • 1
    @dontbeevil it's basically a copy of chrome in a fancy box. That 500mb footprint is probably result of a long optimization process from base chrome :-D
    I kind of get where all that is coming from - html, js and css evolved into great ui toolkit, and if business can pay for 3 versions of an app once (desktop/web/mobile) it's kind of obvious choice.
  • 1
    Strict limitations keep you in a constant state of creativity!

    I personally like the fact that I have to tinker to get a restricted platform to do what I want it to do.

    A few boring library calls and not needing to care about the overhead would slowly kill me (if that was my daily job).
  • 0
    @bigmonsterlover
    Wow, nicely mysterious cliff hanger.
    No content whatsoever.

    Either elaborate your position ( here : WHICH COUNTRY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! ), or maybe sack it and go back to your management desk, shooing people around devoid any reason.
  • 0
    @FreeBasic Did someone forget to feed the interns again?

    But seriously, the goal is to make a functioning product, not to waste the time optimising a part which makes less than 1% of the overall product. It might be fun, it might feel great every time you make an improvement to this thing you've made from the ground up, but nobody cares unless it has a significant overall impact on the actual product. And when you spend hundreds of $ on some hardware, throwing in extra $5 for a more powerful controller is literary less than 1%.
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