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Re:Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code by wildzzz on Monday February 05, 2024 @01:22PM (#39264690)
Why ato over existing hardware description languages or things like SPICE (and it's many derivatives)?
Re:Show HN: Atopile – Design circuit boards with code by mawildoer on Monday February 05, 2024 @01:30PM (#39264852)
Great question! Current HDLs tend to primarily be focussed on digital circuit design, while at the PCBA level, there's a lot more focus on the "fuzziness" of the physical world (eg. tolerances).

We also noticed that most EEs we've worked with were a bit put off by the syntax and preferred something a bit more terse, but more intuitive and easier to read.

There perhaps an analog here in software - where we started with assembly (~ SPICE), moved up through things like C and now languages like Python and JavaScript are prolific and accessible.