Yeah, but that's a vendor issue; it's not that the Engineers don't want to use version control.
We'd like to, for example, but we usually can't. All of the file formats for these PLC tools are binary blobs, and since the language is usually a graphical language (ladder logic) the conventional idea of diff is pretty meaningless unless someone writes a proprietary version control to handle the binary blobs + representing ladder logic through diffs.
We still try to use it, but we lose most of the benefits. I suppose you still get a changelog, but you can't ever merge branches since merging binary blobs with binary blobs will not go well for you.
That's pretty valuable, even without the ability to merge.
The exception of course is some very large companies that do everything in house.
You never change the SW without changing the hardware?
Wowsers. No new features and no bugs.
that's obviously bad, but is it higher than developers across disciplines? i'm sure you guys all use version control, but if you surveyed all web devs, how many of them use version control? i'd bet its a similar number
data.
http://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2010/09/the-sad-state-of-...
I was in a class taught by this guy and I seem to recall him saying that a large (20-40%) of embedded developers he surveyed reported using no version control software.
and look at some of the responses in that thread!
"I think that gcc -Wall -Wextra can be subtituted by lint tool (if you use gcc)."