How many of today's "glue black boxes
together" programmers would
even KNOW when it's appropriate, though? That's the scary part.
Oh, approximately the same number as the number of 'glue FPGAs and
Microcontrollers together' hardware 'designers' who can calcualtr LED
current limiting reissotrs, bias a transistor properly, etc.
Hmm, I dunno if I can agree with that. It does take quite a bit of
expertise to handle FPGAs and microcontrollers. (note I'm not talking
about "slap an Arduino into a project and call it done" here)
I said nothing about using FPGAs or microcontrollers _well_ (or even
properly). I was thinking of the sort of 'designer' who draws a schemaitc
with a microcontroller or FPGA in the middle and that's it. The
programming of said chip is a 'software problem' and is not his
responsibility.
Oh, such people rarely look at the features of the microcontorller
they're using, so you'll find a microcontroller with, say, on-chip I2C
support talking to an I2C EPROM but not using the pinms for said hardawre
suppor so it has to be bit-banged.
And then there are the FPGA designers who design like this : THey'll
enter a scheamtic in the schematic capture program and simulate it. It
doens't work so they say things like 'let's invert that signal and see if
that helps. OK, it didn't, what happes if we change that AND to an OR?'
No real method, no logic to what they are doing. I've met them...
Using these chips well does take considerable skill, I agree.
-tony
