
Software is Eating Hardware – Lessons for Building Magical Devices - ca98am79
http://firstround.com/article/hardware-adam-macbeth
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moistgorilla
"There’s a reason FiftyThree’s Pencil is considered one of the most beautiful
and revolutionary pieces of hardware in recent years"

It is? Am I the one in a bubble here or are the writers of this article in
some strange feedback loop?

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weland
Well fuck, why wasn't I invited to the revolution?

Journalists should know better than throwing around weasel phrases like these.
Consumer devices like the Pencil are outside the scope of _interest_ , let
alone work, of most hardware and embedded software engineers, and it has
changed exactly nothing about the field in general, thus hardly making it
"revolutionary".

~~~
larrys
For this blog post, although a journalist (in training) may have written it,
it is on the firstround blog and the purpose appears to be both educating
companies that first round invests in as well as getting traffic which can
bring first round investment prospects. Hence the link bait title "software is
eating hardware". Made me take a look. Simply "lessons for building magical
devices" wouldn't have.

I'm not seeing any attribution at all as far as who put together this post,
could have been a summer intern. Hard to believe (because of no attribution)
that it's anyone at first round of any significance.

Edit: Just saw carbocations comment re: bylines below.

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carbocation
> We have chosen to not use bylines because we believe the voice and insights
> provided by our subjects are the highest priority.

I came upon this while looking for the author. I think it's too bad they don't
use bylines. It matters to me whether the person who wrote this is their co-
founder, a capitalist, an engineer, etc.

Rather than not using bylines, I'd prefer that they name the author as well as
the reviewers and other contributors, much as Paul Graham does.

~~~
ctdonath
Didn't see a date either. Wanted to see both, as I've the odd feeling I've
seen this before, and it was roundly criticized on HN at the time.

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pling
Software vs hardware again. I've worked in both sides of things (EE and
software) and despite it being my income now, I distrust software people more
than hardware people.

Hardware people have to get it right first time and generally have better
engineering discipline. They are also supported better by their tools
(software tooling is crappy at best compared to say SolidWorks or an EDA
platform).

Software people tend to accept a fuck up on day one and fix it later approach.

Hardware and software people need to work together. Someone with battle scars
from both arenas needs to lead as they understand the compromises at both ends
and can direct the product.

Software isn't eating hardware.

~~~
zhemao
> They are also supported better by their tools

Uh ... have you ever had to use Cadence Virtuoso? If not, consider yourself
lucky.

~~~
pling
Actually yes, well its predecessor on Solaris in about 1999 and they only make
products worse. Anything that comes out of Cadence is a turd. They even ruined
pspice recently.

They company I worked for ended up writing their own layout/simulation
platform after a bout of Cadence and got absorbed into Mentor Graphics.

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JonFish85
>Have Software Lead Your Hardware Team

Having worked in this sort of environment, this scares me a bit. Software
creeps a LOT more easily than hardware. It's too easy for a software person to
ask for "small" upgrades that end up being much more trouble than they're
worth: upgrading to faster processors, more capacity memory, etc, it can be a
real pain. There has to be a balance, and I'm not anxious to have a software
person direct a hardware team again.

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sliverstorm
_People think that they can build a game-changer with some really great
industrial design and packaging... what really matters is an equally beautiful
software system_

Are we missing an aspect here? I feel like we are missing something. I was
pretty certain hardware had more aspects that make it compelling than _design_
and _packaging_.

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ForHackernews
I remember seeing that pencil and thinking it was really stupid. I guess it's
popular with a certain set?

~~~
rm445
Big deal, every product gets it's-not-for-me-so-it-must-be-stupid comments.

The 'Pencil' product is a good example of the points made in the article. It's
a souped-up stylus with some nice features and pretty hardware. But for it to
be a sellable and desirable product at $75, it has to tie in well with
software. Its app seems to be nice and well-received. They also have a
printing service and incorporate social aspects where people share their
creations.

It's not uncommon to buy hardware, that on the face of it is very nice, and
/would/ be good to use, but getting it to work with your software is just an
annoyance. Any company that can convince you going in that the software will
be nice to use, is going to have an advantage.

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todd8
I feel that there is something important here. Sufficiently complex hardware
benefits from having the flexibility and adaptability of software. Many years
ago I did process control programming of machines in a large expensive clean
room assembly line. Amazing machines, custom built, handed materials off to
the next machine in the line. It turned out that the materials could move
around, just a few millimeters, in their plastic carriers. If the carrier
didn't settle in quite snuggly and the materials happened to be sitting in
just the wrong place, the machines would smash through all of the materials in
the carrier because it didn't "see" them while looking/smashing through the
carrier. Of course, the mechanical engineers could fix the optical system that
looked for materials, but the software guys were able to solve the problem in
just a few hours. They had the machines "wiggle" the carrier when it was
loaded to make sure the optical system saw any materials present.

After this experience, the mechanical engineers and software engineers worked
together to ensure that there was a comprehensive API for the machines so that
software could fix, modify, or enhance the machines operation.

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bcd21
>'...the behavior of the car six months from now could be radically different
because software can reshape the capability of the hardware continuously...'

yeah, some of these days Musk will reprogram it to fly with existing hardware.
I gotta find out which language these guys are using.

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skaevola
What does systems-oriented mean in this sentence: "It’s the systems-oriented
software engineer who understands concepts like power management, radio
signals, network communication for small devices" ?

He's not talking about operating systems or embedded systems type stuff,
right?

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sliverstorm
Right, to _me_ my first thought was "That's any embedded hardware/software
engineer, not a special flavor of CS graduate".

But I think he means someone with the same skill set but a traditional CS
background. Not that I quite see what that buys you.

~~~
zhemao
I think the author IS talking about plain-old embedded systems engineers.
Finding a competent one is apparently rather rare. From what I've heard, most
firmware engineers are EEs with only a rudimentary grasp of software
engineering practices and CS concepts.

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analog31
In my view, there's no hierarchy of disciplines such that any discipline
(including marketing) is assured of being "closer" than any other to
understanding the potential customer, the social impact of the product, etc.

