Re:Efficient music players remain elusive
by dreamcompiler on Monday June 26, 2017 @04:43AM
(#14635096)
Efficiency can be done but it requires disciplines only taught in courses on real-time and embedded programming, and those seem to be fairly rare these days. Real-time and embedded programming teach the programmer how to reason about finite resources like time, energy, memory, and floating-point operations while requiring a level of mastery "down to the metal" that's also rare in overly abstraction-driven programming. RTE skills make every programmer better in the same way that glider skills make every pilot better.
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I went to Cal and aside from some hardware classes i never had a real time or embedded class.
I think it requires an open mind to want to learn these things and put effort into it instead of blowing things off as premature or something the maintainer of the code behind you will come and fix.
Anecdotal but this matches my experience. I went to generic public school for ocean engineering and took tons of embedded classes. I then worked on a student robot project and was shocked when the CS students were completely lost with how to approach writing drivers and interfaces for the sensors and such. I thought that would be standard for CS.
Re:Efficient music players remain elusive
by RandomOpinion on Monday June 26, 2017 @10:15AM
(#14636948)
> CS students were completely lost with how to approach writing drivers and interfaces for the sensors and such. I thought that would be standard for CS.
No, that would be standard for computer engineering, not CS.
Try to have a conversation about hardware to many practicing software developers who were CS majors and they'll look at you as if you've grown a second head.
I think that stuff tends to be more common for EEs and CompEs.