I just completed reading an article from O'Reilly by Mike Barlow, "When Hardware Meets Software." It is short and free and does a great job of framing perhaps one of the next technological revolutions. It makes at least three key points: (1) hardware is beginning to achieve the same speedup in product realization that software has experienced using similar techniques, (2) hardware and software will be more equal partners in the future, and (3) software has to raise the bar on quality, security, reliability, (name you favorite "ility"), internet quality of service is simply not good enough for the combination.
What does this say about the next generation of software engineers and especially hackers? They have to be as well versed in hardware too! I think the hacker culture still retains it to a certain extent but not as completely as early Ham Radio enthusiasts or the Byte generation that had no choice but to pick up a soldering iron in order to do their software.
This next wave is a good thing. Just as the rise of social media increased how connected we were to each other. The rise of the Internet of Things/Industrial Internet/ Internet of Everything/Cyber Physical Systems will provide us with an appreciation of the things around us, how they work and what they provide. Great reading for my train ride to Hoboken!
I spent the weekend building some lego and trying to coax a mini-quadcopter to life. Sadly it is not connecting to my iPhone so a new version of the software is in order. Double sadly I am struggling with earlier versions of Java related to earlier version of the arduino IDE. Hopefully progress this week and the next post will have a video of my success. Later!
No comments:
Post a Comment