These are my own personal views and those of my company Phaedrus Systems. www.phaedsys.org which is where the full version of this column resides under the Technical Papers button.

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This month I am going back to the root of the column and looking at Standards and the good old British Tradition of coming up with the idea and being let down by the implementation or commercialization of that idea. First a commercial…..

Actually the two commercials are related both to each other and the subject in hand. It might also just save the planet not to mention help your company! Phaedrus Systems has long been a supporter of UK universities. This is not entirely altruistic as I hope the next generation of engineers will buy vast amounts of tools from me (and any other UK tools distributor who may or may not advertise in ESE) as well as supply your company with the professional engineers it needs for the future. I was approached last year by NXP, formerly Philips Semiconductors, to see if we could find a home with a UK University for some of their surplus but still very usable In Circuit Emulators and old Keil 8051 compiler licenses. Actually, thanks the generosity of ARM updating the Keil software we were able to help 8 UK universities with old but perfectly functioning ICE and some up to Keil compilers. Itis a credit to NXP (and ARM) that they did not just let the old kit rot away until it was no use to anyone but sought to recycle it in a productive manner. Lets face it UK universities need all the help they can get.

More companies should do this. So if you have moved to a new platform and have old, but functioning equipment you could donate to a UK University send me an email (chills@phaedsys.org ) and we will set it up. We have contacts with most of the UK universities. You end up with a PR event for your company, the undying gratitude of a University, most of whom are open to doing commercially leaning research. You get a warm glow of having Done Something Good and cleared out a lot of kit you are never doing to need again. These days, under the new environmental laws on disposing of electronic boards, it will probably cost you more to scrap the hardware than it will cost to donate it.

So much for clearing out development kit…. I bet you also have a lot of "hi-spec hi-end" 2/3/486 and Pentium 1/2 PC’s knocking around next to the surplus dev kit. The average life of a PC in industry is about 5 years these days or 6 months for Home/games PC’s. Now there are strict recycling rules for old PC’s. You can’t just dump them in the skip any more. Well we can help there too.

I have an associate is a volunteer “IT Expert” for Contact, a mental health charity in Morpeth (see http://www.contactmorpeth.org.uk/ )He scrounges old PC’s for use by the charity to teach programming (as therapy!), office skills and provides PCs to out-patients and their carers. The PC’s they need to be able to run win9* and Office 97 at best. If you have old PC’s, memory, hard disks, etc and any Win 9* licenses give him a call. (email contact (at) contactmorpeth.org.uk ) The cost of shipping it to them will be less than the cost of getting it disposed off somewhere else and will actually help people. On top you get the same warm glow of having Done Something Good.

I said I was going back to standards… several interlinked threads here. In a discussion elsewhere the thorny subject of finding competent programmers came up. Most of the protagonists wanted certification for C++ programmers. Unfortunately they wanted ISO C++ certification and could not see any point in including at least an appreciation of: MISRA C++, EC++, JSF++ or even the MS flavours, let alone . The problem is that the ISO C or C++ etc languages are theoretical and any certification will need to look at the major implementations and subsets (love them or hate them), why they are there, what they are seeking to achieve etc.

However the people calling for certificatgion were programmers who wanted to restrict their visibility to just writing pure C++. They want to certify programmers not Software Engineers. Most of them were disdainful of the C.Eng and CITP because that was “management bull” and covered things programmers did not need to know.

I am not sure what this ISO language certification would give whilst most embedded engineers need to use C or C++ in the main, pauses for screams of protest from assembler, Java, Ada, SPARK, Pascal, modula 2, Forth (Hi Paul!) and MPL users, they need many more skills than just “programming” in a single language. Most embedded engineers can use several languages and also need design skills from JSP to UML not to mention the hardware side. Many are Embedded Engineers not just hardware or software.

In any event the C or C++ embedded engineers use is not what the group of purists would recognize as C or C++. They see it as a C or C++ “type of language” because virtually all embedded compilers tend not to be fully compliant to the latest ISO C or C++ standard and have non-standard extensions.

This is one of the reasons why I have been pushing for more embedded engineers to join the IET (formerly IEE) or BCS and chase the C.Eng. If there is any form of software, hardware or embedded engineering certification it is likely to require, be based on or influenced by C.Eng. In any event a C.Eng will not hurt and it does show you have relevant qualifications and experience. The IET has recently widened its requirements for Membership to be more inclusive. Note for C.Eng each candidate is looked at on a case by case basis you need to call and talk to the IET Membership dept on 01438 765678. Do it now and find out if you are eligible for MIET if not C.Eng. What is the worst that can happen? Also IET Membership and C.Eng are tax deductible. http://www.theiet.org/membership/index.cfm

The worrying thing is the programmers in the discussion wanted to turn programming into a trade unsullied by management or “professional” status. If this continues Software Engineering will have gone from a Science to a Profession to a commodity trade on a par with mini cab driving in three generations. It will be the fastest suicide of a profession on record.

To compound the topics above I have had some recent contacts with embedded engineering companies in the Far East and Asia. As we all know the Indian Sub continent is full of new graduates working in high pressure sweat shops with one manager for every 100 programmers churning out poor quality software 18 hours a day 6 days a week…… Well think again.

The companies now contacting me are those that have survived the equivalent of the Indian Dot Com boom-bust. As predicted here some years ago these Indian “sweat shops” are now largely going or have turned very professional. Many of the new companies have set up with CMM at higher levels, have ISO 9K and they do 61508 (safety critical) projects, they like their engineers to join the BCS, IET and go for C.Eng….. You only have to look at the lists of who has recently gained their C.Eng and the rapidly rising numbers of overseas members for the IET and BCS. The Asia and the Far East will soon be more professional than Europe and certainly the US. The US has a larger percentage of self taught, or not formally qualified, embedded people than in Europe.

The mistake that the UK made recently was to require an MSc for C.Eng just at a time when the cost of a UK University degree soared. Most of you need not panic as experience counts and for most who qualified with a BSc or BEng more than a couple of years ago will not need the MSc. Note as each candidate is looked at on a case by case basis you need to call and talk to the IET Membership dept on 01438 765678. Do it now and find out if you are eligible. http://www.theiet.org/membership/index.cfm What is the worst that can happen? Also IET Membership and C.Eng are tax deductible.

Some UK Universities rose to the challenge by running more MSc courses. However they got filled by larger numbers of foreign students. They always had to pay full fees so they did not see any changes. A UK degree, BCS/IET membership and C.Eng are seen as a Good Thing by Asian and Chinese students.

In one or two cases the UK universities actively chased and trained a lot of Chinese students. Many of these students are now working in a Chinese Technical University training their own students. The university in question has seen a marked fall in the number of Chinese students it now gets…. Shot themselves and the UK in the foot I think.

The point is that not only were the Indians undercutting on cheap embedded development, ironically they are being undercut by the Chinese, they are now moving into the high integrity end with CMM, ISO9K companies with highly qualified and professional Engineers. Looking at the way China is behaving it will do the same as India but at an accelerated rate. The Chinese are ramping up their education system and hi-tech industry.

What is the solution? Well, you have to meet the challenge. It won’t go away. At the moment about the only advantage we have is down to innovation. For some reason the Brits are good at innovation. However not every one is an innovator just as not all the Indians and Chinese don’t have an original thought. In time they will start innovating and developing on their own with CMM graded companies and professionally qualified staff.

The “cheap and Cheerful” Far East has now raised the bar on professional development. It can’t be ignored. The British motorbike industry tried that. Now you have to compete on their terms. For those of you under 40 if you want to stay in the embedded industry you need to be working at the higher quality end of the market and turn embedded Engineering in to a real profession with standards that will make the Doctors, Lawyers and Civil Engineers envious.

To this end Astronautics Engineer Jon Jennings has called for the title of "Engineer" to be a protected title. Jennings has joined an escalating list of people using 10 Downing Street's online petition trial to drum up support for his campaign to restore respect in engineers.

"Car mechanics, plumbers and electricians are now commonly referred to as engineers and banks now regard engineers as semi skilled," says his petition. With over 16,000 signatories, and going up at a rate, the petition already tops the "business and industry" category. But it still lags well behind the road pricing petition which received 2M signatories. We need as many people as possible to sign up.

So if you agree that the status of the Engineer is undervalued in UK society, and who wouldn’t agree, sign the petition: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Engineer-Status/ If every reader of ESE votes it could increase the vote by over 10,000.
So today, now would be best, vote on-line for Engineer to be protected http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Engineer-Status/ , join the IET http://www.theiet.org/membership/index.cfm and start your C.Eng application, TODAY. It’s either that or look for a new career because the embedded engineering market in the UK will shrink over the next decade unless we do something NOW