5 ms·

>Can the same hardware not be used for both industrial, and beginner-friendly settings? Sorry but, if you have to ask this question, it's pretty clear that you

by mdszy 7y ago

>Can the same hardware not be used for both industrial, and beginner-friendly settings? Sorry but, if you have to ask this question, it's pretty clear that you have no idea what many industrial settings require. There are ruggedness requirements, stability requirements, longevity requirements... I work in an industry where our products are used for LITERAL decades. There's no way that anything even remotely marketed as "beginner friendly" could begin to work for anything we do. You can't just throw more hardware at a problem and use that as an excuse for shitty software, come on. This incredibly flawed logic is why the minimum requirements for a chat program include 32GB of RAM.

dragontamer 7y ago
> I work in an industry where our products are used for LITERAL decades. There's no way that anything even remotely marketed as "beginner friendly" could begin to work for anything we do. Beginner friendly doesn't mean that the other requirements disappear. The Arduino can run Javascript. Sure, you don't have to make it use Javascript, but it can be done. Just because Arduino runs Javascript doesn't change its -40C to +85C operating temperature. Arduino can be BOTH beginner friendly, AND rugged enough to operate at sub-zero temperatures indefinitely. And if you really want to "remove Javascript" from your stack, then you're 100% welcome to do that. Universities on the other hand, have other requirements. Beginner friendly is absolutely a necessity for students. You have to hook students with something easy if you want the students to be interested in projects. Having a SINGLE platform scale from beginner usage, all the way up to professional usage, is extremely important for the general ecosystem. And I still argue that opening up Javascript developers onto the platform is a good thing. UI design is complicated, and someone who fully focuses on the user-experience, culture, and presentation is useful. (Even if a GUI designer is ignorant of embedded issues, they can remain helpful in other ways).
- mdszy 7y ago
  >Beginner friendly doesn't mean that the other requirements disappear. Beginner friendly includes price. If you have the other requirements, it's going to cost much more. Doesn't matter if it's beginner friendly if a development board costs $5k.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    The development board literally costs $100 and the STM32H747XI costs $17 from Digikey. Yes, that's with -40°C ~ 85°C operating temperature and a pretty wide operating voltage of 1.62V ~ 3.6V. The actual device here looks quite rugged, comes with a variety of useful specs. The Arduino Pro IS the beginner friendly development board, the beginner-friendly introduction to STM32. A "real" product would strip off all the unnecessary parts and only use the $17 STM32H7 chip alone.
    - mbanzi 7y ago
      the basic model is $49 Qt 1. you can also order boards with just the parts you need (minimum quantity applies) the price comes down a lot of you want
- baybal2 7y ago
  JS perf on MCUs is bad. V8 relies on way too many x86 specific assumptions. This is why JS sucks so bad on anything, but top tier ARM socs. On an MCU things will be even worse. For example, it is impossible to control how V8 converts its internal integers to floats and how. One Math.* method may output a Number which is a float behind the scene, another one int, and another one int double. GC on MCU is completely unpredictable too. If it fires when you need to poll latency sensitive peripheral, things hang.
Darkphibre 7y ago
Maaaybe there's different industrial settings other than your own? It's OK if this chip doesn't fit your needs. If it fits no one's needs, it'll fail. But I suspect there are enough niches it fills it will be successful.

by mdszy 7y ago

dragontamer 7y ago

> I work in an industry where our products are used for LITERAL decades. There's no way that anything even remotely marketed as "beginner friendly" could begin to work for anything we do. Beginner friendly doesn't mean that the other requirements disappear. The Arduino can run Javascript. Sure, you don't have to make it use Javascript, but it can be done. Just because Arduino runs Javascript doesn't change its -40C to +85C operating temperature. Arduino can be BOTH beginner friendly, AND rugged enough to operate at sub-zero temperatures indefinitely. And if you really want to "remove Javascript" from your stack, then you're 100% welcome to do that. Universities on the other hand, have other requirements. Beginner friendly is absolutely a necessity for students. You have to hook students with something easy if you want the students to be interested in projects. Having a SINGLE platform scale from beginner usage, all the way up to professional usage, is extremely important for the general ecosystem. And I still argue that opening up Javascript developers onto the platform is a good thing. UI design is complicated, and someone who fully focuses on the user-experience, culture, and presentation is useful. (Even if a GUI designer is ignorant of embedded issues, they can remain helpful in other ways).

mdszy 7y ago
>Beginner friendly doesn't mean that the other requirements disappear. Beginner friendly includes price. If you have the other requirements, it's going to cost much more. Doesn't matter if it's beginner friendly if a development board costs $5k.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  The development board literally costs $100 and the STM32H747XI costs $17 from Digikey. Yes, that's with -40°C ~ 85°C operating temperature and a pretty wide operating voltage of 1.62V ~ 3.6V. The actual device here looks quite rugged, comes with a variety of useful specs. The Arduino Pro IS the beginner friendly development board, the beginner-friendly introduction to STM32. A "real" product would strip off all the unnecessary parts and only use the $17 STM32H7 chip alone.
  - mbanzi 7y ago
    the basic model is $49 Qt 1. you can also order boards with just the parts you need (minimum quantity applies) the price comes down a lot of you want
baybal2 7y ago
JS perf on MCUs is bad. V8 relies on way too many x86 specific assumptions. This is why JS sucks so bad on anything, but top tier ARM socs. On an MCU things will be even worse. For example, it is impossible to control how V8 converts its internal integers to floats and how. One Math.* method may output a Number which is a float behind the scene, another one int, and another one int double. GC on MCU is completely unpredictable too. If it fires when you need to poll latency sensitive peripheral, things hang.

Darkphibre 7y ago

Maaaybe there's different industrial settings other than your own? It's OK if this chip doesn't fit your needs. If it fits no one's needs, it'll fail. But I suspect there are enough niches it fills it will be successful.