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Absolutely amazing. Well done, Garmin. Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives. Fantastic systems engineering work

Absolutely amazing. Well done, Garmin. Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives. Fantastic systems engineering work.

briffle 11mo ago
You'd be even more impressed if you saw just how little resources they have to use (ram, storage, cpu), or how old of a C standard they have to work with. I have a few friends that work on this.
- sib301 11mo ago
  I am indeed impressed but not at all surprised considering what we used to get to the moon!
- ultrarunner 11mo ago
  Seems like Java is popular at Garmin.
  - nradov 11mo ago
    And also — sadly — Monkey C. I cannot imagine what possessed them to invent their own scripting language for wearable device apps. It's sort of like JavaScript but worse and with minimal third-party tooling support. https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/monkey-c/ https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/monkey-c/
    - Palomides 11mo ago
      it kinda sucks, but with the constraints it's at least understandable. they wanted an extremely lightweight language with a bytecode VM which could be ported to whatever MCUs in 2015, while also strictly limiting the functionality for battery usage reasons (and, uh, product segmentation/limiting third party access).
      - gpm 11mo ago
        These days I'd say "sounds like wasm" but I guess 2015 was a bit before that took off.
        jacquesm 11mo ago
        Sounds like p-code.
        pjmlp 11mo ago
        There have been enough bytecodes since UNCOL in 1958 to chose from, and embedded is full of them, nothing special about WASM.
  - ilikehurdles 11mo ago
    While I might not trust C code more than Java in life saving equipment, I would trust a median C developer over a Java one.
    - pjmlp 11mo ago
      Given the amount of CVEs that would be a bad bet. High integrity computing is full of pain staking processes, exactly because no one trusts C developers to do the right thing.
vjvjvjvjghv 11mo ago
“ Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives.” I work on medical devices that improve and save lives but the work actually kind of sucks. You spend most of your time on documentation and develop with outdated tools. It’s important work but I would much prefer “move fast and break things”. So much more interesting.
- pinkmuffinere 11mo ago
  Not to invalidate your experience, but I think both of you feel this way because “you only want what you don’t have”. There are different kinds of joy that come from being impactful, and different kinds that come from moving fast. If only we could move fast and be impactful :’(
  - 1over137 11mo ago
    Lots of the moving fast stuff is very impactful, just often in a bad way.
  - vjvjvjvjghv 11mo ago
    I could be fast and impactful. Just in a negative way. The problem is that I come from the software dev side so I tend to be less interested in the medical side. It’s the same in a lot of safety critical. There is a lot of mundane work to tick the necessary checkboxes. There isn’t much that is interesting from a technological side. Maybe the result is interesting but getting there takes a lot of extremely boring work.
    - jacquesm 11mo ago
      Maybe you should change your line of work. If you're that unhappy about what you do in spite of the fact that what you do is orders of magnitude more important than the next move-fast-and-break-things-advertising-driven-unicorn then that suggests to me that you should let someone else take over who does derive happiness from it and you get yours from a faster paced environment. Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to do the latter and I'd be more than happy to do the former (but I'm not exactly looking for a job).

Absolutely amazing. Well done, Garmin. Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives. Fantastic systems engineering work.

briffle 11mo ago

You'd be even more impressed if you saw just how little resources they have to use (ram, storage, cpu), or how old of a C standard they have to work with. I have a few friends that work on this.

sib301 11mo ago
I am indeed impressed but not at all surprised considering what we used to get to the moon!
ultrarunner 11mo ago
Seems like Java is popular at Garmin.
- nradov 11mo ago
  And also — sadly — Monkey C. I cannot imagine what possessed them to invent their own scripting language for wearable device apps. It's sort of like JavaScript but worse and with minimal third-party tooling support. https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/monkey-c/ https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/monkey-c/
  - Palomides 11mo ago
    it kinda sucks, but with the constraints it's at least understandable. they wanted an extremely lightweight language with a bytecode VM which could be ported to whatever MCUs in 2015, while also strictly limiting the functionality for battery usage reasons (and, uh, product segmentation/limiting third party access).
    - gpm 11mo ago
      These days I'd say "sounds like wasm" but I guess 2015 was a bit before that took off.
      - jacquesm 11mo ago
        Sounds like p-code.
      - pjmlp 11mo ago
        There have been enough bytecodes since UNCOL in 1958 to chose from, and embedded is full of them, nothing special about WASM.
- ilikehurdles 11mo ago
  While I might not trust C code more than Java in life saving equipment, I would trust a median C developer over a Java one.
  - pjmlp 11mo ago
    Given the amount of CVEs that would be a bad bet. High integrity computing is full of pain staking processes, exactly because no one trusts C developers to do the right thing.

vjvjvjvjghv 11mo ago

“ Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives.” I work on medical devices that improve and save lives but the work actually kind of sucks. You spend most of your time on documentation and develop with outdated tools. It’s important work but I would much prefer “move fast and break things”. So much more interesting.

pinkmuffinere 11mo ago
Not to invalidate your experience, but I think both of you feel this way because “you only want what you don’t have”. There are different kinds of joy that come from being impactful, and different kinds that come from moving fast. If only we could move fast and be impactful :’(
- 1over137 11mo ago
  Lots of the moving fast stuff is very impactful, just often in a bad way.
- vjvjvjvjghv 11mo ago
  I could be fast and impactful. Just in a negative way. The problem is that I come from the software dev side so I tend to be less interested in the medical side. It’s the same in a lot of safety critical. There is a lot of mundane work to tick the necessary checkboxes. There isn’t much that is interesting from a technological side. Maybe the result is interesting but getting there takes a lot of extremely boring work.
  - jacquesm 11mo ago
    Maybe you should change your line of work. If you're that unhappy about what you do in spite of the fact that what you do is orders of magnitude more important than the next move-fast-and-break-things-advertising-driven-unicorn then that suggests to me that you should let someone else take over who does derive happiness from it and you get yours from a faster paced environment. Personally, you couldn't pay me enough to do the latter and I'd be more than happy to do the former (but I'm not exactly looking for a job).