3 ms·

>“This brings a whole new set of challenges because they are speaking a completely different language, both technically and mentally.” Both true, but also an i

>“This brings a whole new set of challenges because they are speaking a completely different language, both technically and mentally.” Both true, but also an incomplete picture. It's not just the mental models and the language but also the culture that is very different. H/W guys are bred, born and raised in an environment that thrives on secrecy and where nothing is ever free. The way they transact with one another, the tools they use, and in the end, the very thing they produce all exude that culture. It is exactly the software industry 40 years ago.

tsimionescu 7y ago
It's not just HW, it's all big, niche industry, today. Networking for example is the same. If you want to test high scale network equipment OR virtualized network functions, you will buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of closed-source testing hardware, software and/or professional services from one of a few big vendors. You will not let anything about your algorithms and designs slip to the outside world, and neither will your test vendors. Edit: the same is true of most of the software world in general. Sure, you have Microsoft and Google and many others collaborating on Linux, or releasing Kubernetes, VS Code, Go and so on. But the core IP that is key to their business? That is staying in-house, fiercely guarded, developped and tested by an army of engineers. The main difference is that there are far fewer well-defined software classes that can be tested generally, so it doesn't make too much sense to look for a 'software testing' industry, like you can for hardware. There are some tool vendors, but they offer far fewer guarantees, since it's hard to imagine a product that could find a large proportion of the bugs in both the Haskell compiler and World of Warcraft.

3 ms·

>“This brings a whole new set of challenges because they are speaking a completely different language, both technically and mentally.” Both true, but also an i

by ur-whale 7y ago

tsimionescu 7y ago
It's not just HW, it's all big, niche industry, today. Networking for example is the same. If you want to test high scale network equipment OR virtualized network functions, you will buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of closed-source testing hardware, software and/or professional services from one of a few big vendors. You will not let anything about your algorithms and designs slip to the outside world, and neither will your test vendors. Edit: the same is true of most of the software world in general. Sure, you have Microsoft and Google and many others collaborating on Linux, or releasing Kubernetes, VS Code, Go and so on. But the core IP that is key to their business? That is staying in-house, fiercely guarded, developped and tested by an army of engineers. The main difference is that there are far fewer well-defined software classes that can be tested generally, so it doesn't make too much sense to look for a 'software testing' industry, like you can for hardware. There are some tool vendors, but they offer far fewer guarantees, since it's hard to imagine a product that could find a large proportion of the bugs in both the Haskell compiler and World of Warcraft.