Volume 3, Number 7 Copyright 1998 TGG March 20, 1998

EDITOR: Jack Ganssle, jack@ganssle.com

CONTENTS:
- Editor's Notes
- Discipline? Bah Humbug!
- Thought for the Week
- About The Embedded Muse

Editor's Notes

The Embedded Systems Conference will be in Chicago at the end of the month. Consult www.embedded.com for more information. I’ll be giving the keynote speech so come on by and heckle!

If you’re a vendor of development tools or other products aimed at the embedded market, you’ll be interested to note that Embedded Systems Programming is now doing their annual Buyer’s Guide, a listing of all such products and companies. This year they’re accumulating product data electronically. Contact me or twhittingham@mfi.com for more info.

Discipline? Bah Humbug!

By and large the firmware community is much more casual about software than business programmers. After almost half a century of programming history the COBOL/FORTAN/Desktop crowd has painfully learned reasonable ways to create code. Not that they are entirely successful, but it seems the formal practice of true software ENGINEERING is much more prevalent there than in the embedded world.

Now, this is not a rant against embedded developers. In every group I speak to there’s a division between those in love with chaos, a majority who’d genuinely like to find ways to work better but don’t know where to turn, and a small minority who adopt and practice effective software engineering.

DISCIPLINE is the watchword for effective firmware development. Resist the temptation to take the shortcuts that are so appealing, especially in the heat of schedule pressure.

The subject came up again in the last week or two. My most recent column in ESP discussed firmware software standards. Without a decent standard, one adhered to by the entire team, decent software is quite impossible. An avalanche of feedback from readers ran the gamut of praise to condemnation. A surprising number of replies were of the sort: “hey, I write code my own way and the hell with everyone else”. Again, without DISCIPLINE firmware projects will ultimately fail. Maybe heroics will save project A, but B, C or D will collapse.

Many developers fear the fancy methodologies promoted by legions of gurus. Frankly, so do I. If you’re working on projects that run millions of lines of code, a complex trademarked methodology is probably essential. Most of the rest of us, though, develop products with 10,000 to a couple of hundred thousand lines of code. There are a lot of simple, practical things we can do without buying into the latest oh-so-complex methods.

His book is a “must read” for all of us. It’s not easy. It demands attention and practice. I do highly recommend it for thinking developers looking for ways to work smarter.

Embedded Seminar! Dallas

The focus is uniquely on embedded systems. I'll talk about ways to link the hardware and software, to identify and stamp out bugs, to manage risk, and to meet impossible deadlines.

Here are a few comments from recent attendees:
- Thanks a lot for a great seminar. We really
enjoyed it! We're already putting to use
some of the ideas you gave us. J. Sarget, CSC

- I would like to thank you for the excellent
seminar. I just completed a major project and
your discussion was right on line. Steve Smith, IBM

- Thank you so much for a great class!! Dana
Woodring, Northrup Grumman

- I learned quite a bit and remembered a few things I
had forgotten over the years. Pete
Ackers, Compusolve

Thought for the Week

Computer was something on TV
From a science fiction show
A window was something you hated to clean
And ram was the cousin of a goat

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano

Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3 1/2' floppy
You hoped nobody found out

Compress was something you did to the garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You'd be in jail for a while

Log on was adding wood to the fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode

Cut you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider's home
And a virus was the flu

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead