4 ms·

This concept of course not going to amount to anything more than a hobbyist or prototyping/POC use for quite a while purely from a cost perspective. You can hir

This concept of course not going to amount to anything more than a hobbyist or prototyping/POC use for quite a while purely from a cost perspective. You can hire a master C programmer and pay him $100 an hour for a year, or an advanced JS programmer and pay him $40. Well after launch, you may have saved $150k, but your hardware costs you $50 extra per unit to produce, requires more power to run, and has lower performance and timing precision (not real time). Your break even point is now 3,000 units. This is a non-starter. Other engineering, design and marketing costs will likely land you in the red if you are only producing 3,000 units. Perhaps in some niche markets this concept might be viable (like $500k plug in medical devices), but I doubt it. There is no way to really getting around learning hardware. Who is going to write the hardware interface drivers or driver/JavaScript bridge. Power consumption will rule out the possibility of many portable devices, loss of performance will rule out many options as well as will latency caused by the garbage collected (non real time) nature.

Jormundir 13y ago
You don't seem to understand history.
shadowmint 13y ago
This is the 'write everything in assembly' argument. Productivity and prototyping gains that allow you to proof of concept, manufacture and sell small runs of (expensive) toys, enables large scale investment to manufacture more mature products. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, and, honestly, the 'big bang' approach of writing it all in C and producing 500,000 units before actually getting them out to anyone is extremely risky. That's why hardware doesn't get investment. Just look at kickstarter; great ideas popping up, people wanting them, people getting them. If you only ever end up making 5000 units for your 5000 backers, so what? Great idea. Prototyped a thing. People who wanted one got one. Not a mass market thing? Ok. We're not not $4,000,000 in debt. How terrible.
- weland 13y ago
  > That's why hardware doesn't get investment. Just look at kickstarter; great ideas popping up, people wanting them, people getting them. What exactly leads you to believe that hardware doesn't get investment? Besides Kickstarter, I mean. Hardware development tends to be massively funded. You get less exposure for a lot more money, which is why Kickstarter is obviously not a good place to look, but in most projects I've seen it was software, not hardware that tended to be underfunded.
  - shadowmint 13y ago
    I've practically never heard of people getting funded with hardware ideas outside of Kickstarter. If you've got some links to incubators/hardware startup scenes, please share. I honestly can't think of any hardware startups which have been funded off the top of my head; maybe Nest? MakerBot (weren't they privately funded by the founders)?
    - weland 13y ago
      > I've practically never heard of people getting funded with hardware ideas outside of Kickstarter. You mean you've never heard of small startups getting funded with hardware ideas, which is unsurprising considering that it takes significantly more money to develop a working prototype than it takes to develop a web application. Kickstarter is not the only place where people get funds, and startups with four people working 80-hour weeks are not the only places where innovation happens. There are things like littleBits, of course. But the fact that new electronic gadgets keep hitting the shops is a clear enough indication that they get funding from somewhere.
    - samatman 13y ago
      http://lemnoslabs.com/ http://lemnoslabs.com/
    - shivaas 13y ago
      Techstars has invested in a bunch of hardware startups. Romotive, Orbotix, Ubooly to name a few...
rwallace 13y ago
It's not just about the money it cost to write the code. I mean, as a master C programmer I am not without sympathy for your suggested approach, but if you follow the philosophy of 'real men write the entire stack in hand-optimized C' and as a result it takes an extra six months before you're shipping, you might miss a key market window and then all the other considerations might end up not mattering. It's not like we haven't seen this play out before. Over and over again, flexibility, easy debugging, time-to-market and Moore's law have gone up against the 'real men' approach - and won hands down. History doesn't always repeat itself - but it's usually the way to bet.

Jormundir 13y ago

You don't seem to understand history.

shadowmint 13y ago

This is the 'write everything in assembly' argument. Productivity and prototyping gains that allow you to proof of concept, manufacture and sell small runs of (expensive) toys, enables large scale investment to manufacture more mature products. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, and, honestly, the 'big bang' approach of writing it all in C and producing 500,000 units before actually getting them out to anyone is extremely risky. That's why hardware doesn't get investment. Just look at kickstarter; great ideas popping up, people wanting them, people getting them. If you only ever end up making 5000 units for your 5000 backers, so what? Great idea. Prototyped a thing. People who wanted one got one. Not a mass market thing? Ok. We're not not $4,000,000 in debt. How terrible.

weland 13y ago
> That's why hardware doesn't get investment. Just look at kickstarter; great ideas popping up, people wanting them, people getting them. What exactly leads you to believe that hardware doesn't get investment? Besides Kickstarter, I mean. Hardware development tends to be massively funded. You get less exposure for a lot more money, which is why Kickstarter is obviously not a good place to look, but in most projects I've seen it was software, not hardware that tended to be underfunded.
- shadowmint 13y ago
  I've practically never heard of people getting funded with hardware ideas outside of Kickstarter. If you've got some links to incubators/hardware startup scenes, please share. I honestly can't think of any hardware startups which have been funded off the top of my head; maybe Nest? MakerBot (weren't they privately funded by the founders)?
  - weland 13y ago
    > I've practically never heard of people getting funded with hardware ideas outside of Kickstarter. You mean you've never heard of small startups getting funded with hardware ideas, which is unsurprising considering that it takes significantly more money to develop a working prototype than it takes to develop a web application. Kickstarter is not the only place where people get funds, and startups with four people working 80-hour weeks are not the only places where innovation happens. There are things like littleBits, of course. But the fact that new electronic gadgets keep hitting the shops is a clear enough indication that they get funding from somewhere.
  - samatman 13y ago
    http://lemnoslabs.com/ http://lemnoslabs.com/
  - shivaas 13y ago
    Techstars has invested in a bunch of hardware startups. Romotive, Orbotix, Ubooly to name a few...

rwallace 13y ago

It's not just about the money it cost to write the code. I mean, as a master C programmer I am not without sympathy for your suggested approach, but if you follow the philosophy of 'real men write the entire stack in hand-optimized C' and as a result it takes an extra six months before you're shipping, you might miss a key market window and then all the other considerations might end up not mattering. It's not like we haven't seen this play out before. Over and over again, flexibility, easy debugging, time-to-market and Moore's law have gone up against the 'real men' approach - and won hands down. History doesn't always repeat itself - but it's usually the way to bet.