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This article is remarkable because there is typically very limited accessible blogs about topics like this. This long article requires in-depth knowledge of a l
by LeifCarrotson 9y ago
This article is remarkable because there is typically very limited accessible blogs about topics like this. This long article requires in-depth knowledge of a large number of microcontrollers, and the time, desire, and ability to verify, collate, and summarize all that information. That's a rare combination.
An ordinary journalist could not write this article. It would take hundreds or thousands of hours to gain the domain knowledge required to understand what needs to be written up and described - it demonstrates a deep understanding of topics like ISR latencies, peripheral compatibility, memory and instruction requirements, and other stuff that really matters to engineers but is typically beyond the reach of a casual reader. As a result, news in the field is very, very rarely unbiased, informative reviews - there are a lot of 'new product' press releases unsubtly promoted as 'articles'.
An embedded systems engineer at some company building a product using these microcontrollers would not write up this article. Not only is the comprehensive knowledge required uncommon even among skilled engineers, it would take dozens of non-billable hours and would make it easier for competitors. And we typically have very narrow domain expertise, so the ability to create a website and rich blog experience like this would be unusual. (The database issues the site had under load this morning are excused!) Open-source and information sharing are not commonplace within embedded systems development.
And you won't be able to easily generate this comparison yourself without a lot of work. You might think that the numbers described would be front-and-center on the first page of each datasheet for these microcontrollers. But you'd be wrong, or at least naive. Each manufacturer's marketing department exaggerates their numbers in slightly different ways, so the first page of the datasheet is inevitably worthless bull shit.
- koancone 9y agoSo why was it written, what is the motivation of the author?
- vidarh 9y agoFrom the first sentences of this article: > As an embedded design consultant I know that for my own part, a lot of what I blog when I blog tends to be motivated either from increasing my professional visibility or because it's something I spend time doing anyway and where I figure I it'll be useful to someone (I know I've done it right whenever I find my own blog posts in search results a couple of years later and they answer my question)
- LeifCarrotson 9y agoAnd it works, depending on who you are trying to reach. I know that this article has me completely convinced that Jay could be extremely effective assisting with any of my projects. Much more so than any Ivy League diplomas, years of experience or lack thereof, glossy brochures, testimonials, or other conventional marketing tools. And it's significantly more effective than any FizzBuzz quiz I could administer to potential candidates. For all the foibles of business politics, expert opinion from within the organization is extremely persuasive when it's available (though an organization that really needs Jay's services because they have no internal experts would have a hard time using this article).
- drzaiusapelord 9y agoAlso people like to talk about their interests and work. I don't see a lot of my own writings being about profit. My interest in them existed well before they helped me get into this profession.
- kingosticks 9y agoAnd from https://jaycarlson.net/about/ https://jaycarlson.net/about/: > Jay is available for engineering services on a contract basis I'm not saying that's the number one goal here, I think this very thorough and informative piece goes way beyond a personal advert. But it must help (and rightly so).
- qznc 9y ago> This long article requires in-depth knowledge of a large number of microcontrollers, and the time, desire, and ability to verify, collate, and summarize all that information. So, Google needs to train its AI to recognize this instead of relying on PageRank. We still need page rank to measure authority, though. Otherwise other AIs will soon mass produce content which looks like it "requires in-depth knowledge of a large number of microcontrollers, and the time, desire, and ability to verify, collate, and summarize all that information" but is actually nonsense. Alternatively, we trick spam producer into doing valuable work.
- qkls 9y agoGoogle doesn't _need_ to recognize this because it's objective isn't to show you the best result but just a good enough result to keep you using Google. A search engine that only gives you the best result wouldn't even need the search results page. And that's where Google likes to sell ads.
- derefr 9y agoHow about an (technical advisor to a) buyer for a company like Adafruit, that both resells SoC/microcontroller "developer boards", and puts out their own? I could see them writing up their experience in trying to find good SoCs to base their products on, and how they compare to the ones in the boards they resell.