Embedded Systems Engineering Standards Column vol 13.2 March/April 2005 Home and Away . By Chris Hills

 

have to give the usual disclaimer that that these are my own personal views and not those of the ESE Editor and publisher. or those of my employer.... see next months item!

 

So, I start the New Year with a New Employer. (all this changed again by the end of March) I will be working with a much larger range of ICE and debuggers, the usual raft of software tools and compilers. Also I am doing all the usual support so email me on Contact for support of you just want to say "hello".

 

For this New Year I have new working conditions: I'm at home! See the last column on the web site for my thoughts on this. I should be interested in other people' reaction to working at home. Most Engineers working at home seem to prefer it but Managers are still skeptical. A bit of "Theory X, Theory Y" creeping in here…. Email me with any thoughts or opinions on this. Contact

 

For reasons of space last months column did not make it in to print. Items in last months column were ISOC (the next WG14, international C panel, meeting will be the first the UK has not sent a delegation to… ), the ISO high-Integrity Study Group (looking at C because to ignore C is to ignore reality), MISRA-C (we actually started on the Test suite!), education (new magazine from the IEE for teenagers) and R&D. You really should see the link to James Dyson's talk on R&D in the UK. A light in the dark! In fact EVERY Engineer, Technical Manager and CEO should read it! If the link is gone I have a transcript of the presentation. Well, that was "last month" in fact it was written before Christmas. It seems a long time ago now.

 

What's new this month? I went to the Embedded World in Nuremberg. Amazing! It was about the size of four full halls at the NEC and lots of visitors to boot! I found out why German Engineers get to go to shows and how you can to it is a simple formula….

 

With German efficiency they look at the program. List the companies, tools, products and people and speakers they want to see with an action plan of why they want to see them. You can quite easily build up an impressive list at Nuremberg because "everyone" is there. With smaller shows it can be more difficult. This is why some of the smaller are more specialised to a single area such as automotive or medical.

 

The justification for going is: comparing tools, dev-kits etc for the current project. Then there is getting ideas and solutions for the current and next project. That is the x factor…. Seeing something that you were not expecting that is a solution to your problem.

 

Getting ideas is almost as important as seeing the tools. A day at a trade show throws up ideas faster than anything else, as it is a change of venue, people and stimuli. A "day out" is as the old saying goes: "a change is as good as a rest". In other words you get refreshed by the experience because you get to feel part of the embedded world and not stuck in a box. Managers should make it a rule that all engineers attend at least one relevant show or conference a year. Preferably the ESE October show the Editor says!

The advantage of going to a show is, of course, you can spend as long or short a time as you want looking at a stand. You don't have to leave your card. So things that seemed like a good idea from the advert or web site you only have to spend 5 minutes looking at and when you discover they are not what you thought they were leave with your card. Try not to get swiped though. Note to stand swipers:- there is no point in collecting data from everyone. It they are interested they will leave their details. It you collect data from some one who is not interested it wastes everyone's time. Also the potential customer will not be happy when your salesman calls him later for things he does not want.

 

Another advantage at shows is that you can talk to vendor A then Vendor B and directly compare claims and go back to vendor A again. You can also compare Vendor A with Vendor C. Where vendor C is one you have not considered before. Unless you can have several vendors sitting in separate rooms in your office this is the easiest, and most cost effective, way of comparing tools and solutions. What is more you get to do it anonymously. Only the winners (or finalists) get to know who you are.

 

The final part of the German Plan is you write up a report on the day. This is really just adding notes to the plan you put up to start with. Remember to point out to your manager that discovering a tool is not what you need is as important as finding the one you want. If you can get round 5 vendors and dismiss 3 of them from the running that is a lot of time saved. That is time saved on three vendors visiting you spending time in your office and tying up resources etc and then pestering the life out of you now they know who you are. The final advantage is at the show you drink their coffee!

 

For me the best part of the Nuremberg show was I got to talk to many people I only "talk" to by email most of the year. It is a chance to catch up face to face over a coffee and do deals. In this age of emails there is no substitute for a face to face meeting. Also see what is new. There should be a write up on the show elsewhere in this edition of ESE so I won't repeat it here.

 

Talking about shows I got roped into organising Track one of the IEE Automotive Conference on the 15th of March at the IEE. I have now realised that it is the 1st Annual… so there will be one next year.

 

Most of the MISRA-C team were there talking to the companies who make code generators (modelling tools) and users of auto-generated code and tying down what the users want from a test suite for MICRA-C. There people from the top automotive manufacturers of Europe discussing where things are going over the next 1 to 2 years so it was current and useful with no sales pitches or academic flights of fancy.

 

An interesting discussion came up on the ACCU discussion forum. The ACCU used to be the Association of C and C++ Users (formally the C Users Group) see www.accu.org . It has now expanded to cover several other related languages. It has over 1000 members who are very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Two of the best features of the ACCU for non-members are the open discussion forums. These are mail lists that come to you. And the 3000 book reviews. The ACCU does not sell books but named ACCU members, including myself, write reviews of books. These are current software. the ACCU is totally independent of any other organisation it can afford to publish honest reviews. One of my reviews started "I did not pay money for this book I would suggest no one else should either…" Interesting the publishers like this honesty and about 30 new reviews are added a month.

 

The book review section is classified and searchable on subject, author etc. the embedded section is over 100 books and there are several other sections that will interest embedded developers eg RTOS, Linux, C and C++.

 

The only drawback is that the ACCU membership is probably 90% "desktop" biased. Though I should really say non-embedded, as there are UNIX, Linux, Mac, VAX based users doing a multitude of things.

 

I was on the ACCU general discussion mail list (open to non-members) last month when a thread on Certification came up. It started out as interview questions, then how to test/screen candidates for programming jobs before getting to certification. I look at this as and was interested to see that the reaction of the largely UK based posters was that they did not like the BCS at all. They did not like the fact that to become a Member or Chartered you had to know about Management Stuff. Most just wanted to be programmers. I can sympathise with this.

 

The discussion eventually looked at if could the ACCU certify programmers. What they wanted was certification much closer to the coalface, the actual trade of writing code. Was a few years (relevant) experience better than a degree? This sparked all the usual discussions. Now, there are all sorts of interesting questions here. The BCS/IEE C.Eng is not going to go away as the professional software or firmware Engineers mark. However do others want a lower (different?) programmers "trade" certification? I saw that programmers in the US were talking about something similar. They wanted a "Programmers Guild". A bit like a union, not an association like doctors. Though from what I can see most of the US programmers don't have university degrees.

 

The IEE C.Eng is far more corporate and is aimed at Professionals who want to do more than "just" program. Not everyone wants to manage software they just want to build it to some one else's design. Should there be a "programmers" qualification. I should be interested in people's reactions to this. There are several company schemes but nothing generic. What do you think should there be a professional programmers certification? Email me.

 

I have a copy of the DTI report "Electronics 2015" and is fascinating. A must for all managers to read. Also, for that matter Engineers too.

 

Finally another ACCU thread message was: "Where has the fun gone?" Ironically all the programmers were looking back at the good old days when the programmed 8-bit home micros. They had a lot of fun with these small machines and complained that it is a pity there are no 8-bit computers left to play on. Will you tell them or shall I?

 

 

 

Author Details and contact

 

Eur Ing Chris Hills BSc CEng MIET MBCS MIEEE  FRGS   FRSA is a Technical Specialist and can be reached at This Contact

 

Copyright Chris A Hills  2003 -2008
The right of Chris A Hills to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988