> From: Mike McCarty [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 2:58 PM
<...> > How about the prejudice that software engineers are only good > for writing programs, while hardware engineers can design > both hardware *and* software? It just goes to show that knowledge may be finite, but ignorance is limitless. Hardware engineers like me can and do write software, it's just crude, inefficient, subject to abuse and not suitable for general distribution. It's good enough to test my own hardware, but a software engineer can do it in a third the time, so why bother? Similarly, I'm sure most software engineers can design hardware, but probably not something you would want to run through a production line and support in the field. I don't know where the idea came about that hardware engineers can write better embedded systems. For a software engineer to do a good job on an embedded project, they have to understand hardware, but that's very different from being able to do a manufacturable design. Similarly, a good hardware engineer has to know enough about software to intelligently talk to the software engineer, but that does not imply they could write the system. In the good situations, both engineers understand enough about each other's area that they can ask probing questions from a different viewpoint and come up with a better system design than either could have alone. I suspect that design managers who have the misguided notion you brought up have never worked with a real software engineer. This is not rocket science. If your pipes are leaking, don't call a carpenter. -- Seth Goodman -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
