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> I think the barrier specifically for software engineering is probably a bit lower now than in the past. It really depends. I don't think you can compare wri

> I think the barrier specifically for software engineering is probably a bit lower now than in the past. It really depends. I don't think you can compare writing a CRUD to writing a hardware controller, for example. I think HN tends to be in a bit of a web bubble. There's plenty of software engineering that has nothing to do with the web.

scarface74 7y ago
I would think just the opposite. HN is very much a west coast, $300K salary, everyone either works at a FAANG or cool startup bubble completely ignoring the “dark matter” and regular old enterprise developers. But seeing how I taught myself assembly language in the 80s and learned how to optimized programs to run on 65C02 1Mhz computers with 128KB of RAM in middle school, I don’t see why teaching yourself how to do low level hardware programming is any different than learning anything else. Yes and I spent 12 years doing C bit twiddling.
- barbecue_sauce 7y ago
  I often see people say they did "C bit twiddling". Is that just a folksier way to say C programming (as I have suspected) or does it mean something distinct?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    C bit twiddling for me means a bit of inline assembly, inspecting the assembly generated by the compiler, figuring out why the files generated didn’t work across platforms (found out about the endian difference between x86 and whatever the mainframes we were also targeting), etc.
  - burfog 7y ago
    There are people, not too many anymore, who write C without even remembering how to use the bitwise operators. They can't use any of: left shift, right shift, bitwise and, bitwise or, xor, complement. They may use unions or pointers, but not for any sort of aliasing. To them, byte order and struct packing are fuzzy concepts that never come in to play. Most of these programmers have moved on to Java, Javascript, and Python. Those doing "C bit twiddling" are the other C programmers. Most commonly I hear the phrase from people who are capable of this low-level programming but never liked it. People using the phrase seem to be mostly people who have moved on to languages like C++, C#, and Go. People actually doing the "C bit twiddling" seem to just say "C programming" as you have suspected. So I guess it is a way of saying "C, including the parts I don't miss" for people who could do it but never liked it.
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  My BG is similar (thank you Commodore). I think the aptitude to do low level is different than doing other types of programming. You have to think more like a computer than when you work upstairs at the UI level. I think if you had a low level bootcamp and a "traditional" bootcamp, you'd have a higher success rate coming from the "traditional" bootcamp.

scarface74 7y ago

I would think just the opposite. HN is very much a west coast, $300K salary, everyone either works at a FAANG or cool startup bubble completely ignoring the “dark matter” and regular old enterprise developers. But seeing how I taught myself assembly language in the 80s and learned how to optimized programs to run on 65C02 1Mhz computers with 128KB of RAM in middle school, I don’t see why teaching yourself how to do low level hardware programming is any different than learning anything else. Yes and I spent 12 years doing C bit twiddling.

barbecue_sauce 7y ago
I often see people say they did "C bit twiddling". Is that just a folksier way to say C programming (as I have suspected) or does it mean something distinct?
- scarface74 7y ago
  C bit twiddling for me means a bit of inline assembly, inspecting the assembly generated by the compiler, figuring out why the files generated didn’t work across platforms (found out about the endian difference between x86 and whatever the mainframes we were also targeting), etc.
- burfog 7y ago
  There are people, not too many anymore, who write C without even remembering how to use the bitwise operators. They can't use any of: left shift, right shift, bitwise and, bitwise or, xor, complement. They may use unions or pointers, but not for any sort of aliasing. To them, byte order and struct packing are fuzzy concepts that never come in to play. Most of these programmers have moved on to Java, Javascript, and Python. Those doing "C bit twiddling" are the other C programmers. Most commonly I hear the phrase from people who are capable of this low-level programming but never liked it. People using the phrase seem to be mostly people who have moved on to languages like C++, C#, and Go. People actually doing the "C bit twiddling" seem to just say "C programming" as you have suspected. So I guess it is a way of saying "C, including the parts I don't miss" for people who could do it but never liked it.
throwaway55554 7y ago
My BG is similar (thank you Commodore). I think the aptitude to do low level is different than doing other types of programming. You have to think more like a computer than when you work upstairs at the UI level. I think if you had a low level bootcamp and a "traditional" bootcamp, you'd have a higher success rate coming from the "traditional" bootcamp.