This week, Collin Walls from Mentor Graphics, published an article from guest columnist Meador Inge in his blog. The blog post is called “C is great, but…“, and it goes on to highlight how embedded software programmers should get into languages other than C, the premise is that doing only C will make you a bad programmer. I agree and I have a lot to learn. I’ve played with Python in the past (not with embedded software purposes) and it’s been fun and educative.
On a similar note as Meador’s post, I believe developers should not limit themselves to a single software architecture. so I’ve also been learning the pleasures of RTOS. Coming from the low-end embedded world and having worked with 8 and 16-bit microcontrollers for most of the last 6 years, I’ve become used to forcing myself to do resource constrained software, with bare-schedulers at most. While this has been fun, I think I really need to get going with bigger systems. So I started playing around with MQX by Embedded Access, which is currently being offered by Freescale on several MCU and MPU. I believe MQX is a really nice step towards bigger and more complex RTOS, it has all the basic functionalities an RTOS is supposed to have as well as integrated communications stacks (ethernet, USB) that make suitable for a lot of projects. Freescale is putting a lot of effort into releasing a lot of enablement material.
Even with such a nice option, many of us are less than beginners in the world of RTOS. If you are one such case you should take a look a the Friendly Little Interrupt Tasker (or FLIRT), it’s a very small and simple RTOS ported to Freescale’s S08 architecture. The author, Dave Armour, published an article on Embedded.com about it, the article explains the operation of this great little RTOS in clear and simple language so that even the least knowledgeable of us can understand. A recommended read.
How about you? What’s your experience with changing your development paradigms? Leave a comment and let me know your experience with new languages, software architectures, RTOS, etc.




No andaba muerto, andaba de parranda
October 25, 2009We have a saying in Mexico: “No andaba andaba “>muerto, andaba de parranda”, which is roughly equivalent to: “he wasn’t dead, he was just out partying”. I haven’t written in some weeks, but there is, I think, a good reason for it: I was out partying…
No, really, I just joined a citizen action group called “Ciudad para Todos” (City for All). We’re a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting a healthier city through increased use alternative transportation like bicycle and public transport as opposed to the car-centric view of modern life. Aaanyway, the first couple of months working with this group have been particularly intense and taking up a lot of my free time. But I’ve decided I have to also commit to my blog as I am also an engineer, and this is what this post is about.
How do you define yourself, as engineer? As an “also engineer”? As an engineer and ‘x’? I have always had trouble with the idea of describing who I am, because I consider myself to be too many things, and I like it like that. I like to see myself as some sort of musician and some sort of writer. I also see myself as a free-thinker, an avid reader, a coffee addict. I will probably even be a family man some day (who knows, right?) When I was in college I had a lot of friends doing the social work thing. I was drawn to it, but considered my studies too important to do it. I was also doing an internship that eventually got me a part-time job that eventually got me my first full-time engineer job. I was career oriented, and still am, but I always felt I sacrificed a bit too much by doing so. On the other side of the equation, I also know people who definitely did more engineering than me during college. After almost 5 years of having finished college I came to the conclusion that I need to start doing stuff to change my contribution to life, because essentially I would implode if I didn’t. I am not JUST and engineer and this is just part of me. Some people have the drive to come home and start programming a random, self-motivated embedded software project. I admire them a lot, cause I don’t. When I come home I have the drive to grab the guitar and pluck at it for a couple of hours, that’s just who I am. I also am worried about the environment and how irrationally my city is growing, so I went and joined a group that is trying to change things.
I believe the world is made up of different types of people. I know that, because of my engineering training, I can satisfactorily do engineering work and be good at it. Yet, I don’t see myself as just that person. Some people are more of the just-engineer type, I know my brother spends more hours per day programming than me, some people are better suited for that. How about you? What type of engineer are you?
Posted in Commentary, Embedded stories, Generic stuff | Tagged Creativity, do it yourself, embedded developer life style, Embedded stories | 4 Comments »