V
Vinh Pham
Guest
I've always lamented the fact that there has been more literature on the
software design process than hardware. I imagine it's because there are far
more SW people than HW, in a total population sense, and the fact that HW
has small, very specialized areas of work.
Of course, there's nothing preventing us from borrowing ideas from the SW
community and adapting it to HW. Have any of you folks tried?
Some things are easy to borrow, like Extreme Programming's emphasis on
writing test code before source code, automating the testing process, and
testing daily. Refactoring code, using tests to make sure you didn't break
anything along the way.. Design Pattern's architecture reuse vs. code
reuse. Etc.
But SW design and HW design are different beasts. Application software
tends to have "unlimited" resources (RAM, HD space, processing power vs.
processing needs) so they have the luxary to do things that we can't.
Anyways, I'm interested in hearing any personal stories or thoughts on the
subject. I hope people feel it's something worth talking about.
Regards,
Vinh
P.S. Hmm I wonder if processes and methodologies, in the HW world, is
considered an unofficial "trade secret." Sorta of how cooks don't share
details of their recipies. I still think it's mostly a population, critical
mass thing.
software design process than hardware. I imagine it's because there are far
more SW people than HW, in a total population sense, and the fact that HW
has small, very specialized areas of work.
Of course, there's nothing preventing us from borrowing ideas from the SW
community and adapting it to HW. Have any of you folks tried?
Some things are easy to borrow, like Extreme Programming's emphasis on
writing test code before source code, automating the testing process, and
testing daily. Refactoring code, using tests to make sure you didn't break
anything along the way.. Design Pattern's architecture reuse vs. code
reuse. Etc.
But SW design and HW design are different beasts. Application software
tends to have "unlimited" resources (RAM, HD space, processing power vs.
processing needs) so they have the luxary to do things that we can't.
Anyways, I'm interested in hearing any personal stories or thoughts on the
subject. I hope people feel it's something worth talking about.
Regards,
Vinh
P.S. Hmm I wonder if processes and methodologies, in the HW world, is
considered an unofficial "trade secret." Sorta of how cooks don't share
details of their recipies. I still think it's mostly a population, critical
mass thing.