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Yup Hardware engineers (most of them, anyway) make awful software developers. They always get dregged on any slightly flexible process and higher level develo

Yup Hardware engineers (most of them, anyway) make awful software developers. They always get dregged on any slightly flexible process and higher level development.

sandworm101 2y ago
And when software engineers are allowed to built hardware, we end up using touchscreens to turn on our headlights. Whoever decided that we need an app to open our car doors was't a hardware engineer.
- DanielHB 2y ago
  You use touchscreens to turn on your headlights because it is cheaper, touchscreens and embedded SoCs are so cheap these days that adding one to your car (as long as it is rectangular) is tons cheaper than wiring multiple buttons on your dashboard. The cost of programming those displays is relatively small and fixed, it doesn't get more expensive if you sell 1 million cars or 10. But these companies still haven't managed to have proper processes for the software platforms for their cars so the software ends up sucking. They treat their cars like video game developers, once done and released there might be a few patches. But the next car is mostly rebuilding the software from scratch. On an aside as more people are becoming aware that buttons and knobs are actually nice you will likely see them coming back, but only on the more expensive vehicles.
  - emsign 2y ago
    > On an aside as more people are becoming aware that buttons and knobs are actually nice you will likely see them coming back, but only on the more expensive vehicles. While the inflationary overuse for touchscreen is driven by cost (and fashion), it's not really like that buttons are coming back only in higher priced cars. Dacia being the cheapest European automaker uses lotsof buttons in their cockpits.
bluGill 2y ago
I can design hardware - but as a programmer I know I'm not very good with it and avoid it. I know when I design something it will be subject to things I barely understand like RF and cross talk. I could get a EE degree (either formally or just by self study), but that would be a lot of work and so I think it is better to not do that. Hardware developers fail to understand they are not very good at software and they don't understand the mess they are making.

Yup Hardware engineers (most of them, anyway) make awful software developers. They always get dregged on any slightly flexible process and higher level development.

sandworm101 2y ago

And when software engineers are allowed to built hardware, we end up using touchscreens to turn on our headlights. Whoever decided that we need an app to open our car doors was't a hardware engineer.

DanielHB 2y ago
You use touchscreens to turn on your headlights because it is cheaper, touchscreens and embedded SoCs are so cheap these days that adding one to your car (as long as it is rectangular) is tons cheaper than wiring multiple buttons on your dashboard. The cost of programming those displays is relatively small and fixed, it doesn't get more expensive if you sell 1 million cars or 10. But these companies still haven't managed to have proper processes for the software platforms for their cars so the software ends up sucking. They treat their cars like video game developers, once done and released there might be a few patches. But the next car is mostly rebuilding the software from scratch. On an aside as more people are becoming aware that buttons and knobs are actually nice you will likely see them coming back, but only on the more expensive vehicles.
- emsign 2y ago
  > On an aside as more people are becoming aware that buttons and knobs are actually nice you will likely see them coming back, but only on the more expensive vehicles. While the inflationary overuse for touchscreen is driven by cost (and fashion), it's not really like that buttons are coming back only in higher priced cars. Dacia being the cheapest European automaker uses lotsof buttons in their cockpits.

bluGill 2y ago

I can design hardware - but as a programmer I know I'm not very good with it and avoid it. I know when I design something it will be subject to things I barely understand like RF and cross talk. I could get a EE degree (either formally or just by self study), but that would be a lot of work and so I think it is better to not do that. Hardware developers fail to understand they are not very good at software and they don't understand the mess they are making.