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Comment by hemancuso | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad we have so many centers of intellectual production making software rather than grinding out security cameras and assembling things designed elsewhere. That being said, I do appreciate the value in production and Apple points out to me every day the value of merging hardware and software, but by in large I'm glad America still excels on the on the highest end of the foodchain.

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I'd argue that software is the lowest end of the foodchain. Pretty much anyone can write software, anywhere in the world, it's pretty much the first step to understanding how electronics work. Designing hardware is a much more difficult task and needs the kind of ecosystem described in the post.

As a software engineer in industrial automation, I'd have to agree. Writing code for a robot is definitely the simplest step in building robots. Designing hardware, drawing up electrical diagrams, and actually building the damn thing are where the real challenges lie.

I used to think that, but recently I've come to think that if that were true, than software would be way better than it currently is, and hardware way worse.

My impression is that it tends to be way easier to create a lot of moving parts in software where physics isn't there to act as a guide. In essence, it's way easier to make shitty software organically than it is with hardware.

Your impression is true, and there's a good explanation for it. In my experience, the cost of software failure is much smaller than the cost of hardware failure.

If your software fails, your robot might behave erratically. No problem, just revert to the last stable version and try again. OTOH if there's a mistake in the hardware spec, you will have to replace that $5000 sensor, or worse, your robot might electrocute someone.

End result is you can get away with shitty software, but you can't get away with shitty hardware.

The Therac 25 medical radiation accidents are an illustration of this point. The 25 had low-quality software running a robot with too few hardware safeties built in, and caused injuries and deaths. Previous Therac models had similarly defective software as the 25, but killed nobody due to having hardware safety features independent from software.

It could also be because we've had comparatively little time developing software.

And again, we're involved with the top of that food chain: Intel and its fabs that cost $5 billion to make.

Why do you think software is the "highest end of the foodchain"? Is finance even higher in your mind?

What makes you think that most hardware made in China is designed elsewhere? To the best of my knowledge, the HUGE Chinese smartphone/tablet market is based on chips, boards, and software all designed there.

To the best of my knowledge, China doesn't do much design work locally. Most factories simply build whatever is on the blueprint which they receive from the West.

> To the best of my knowledge

I think you you need to improve your knowledge then. Or provide a citation.

I've got a sample size of one. I work in a factory, and almost all our designs (including tooling and processes) come from the head office in America.

It's funny to think of it as "the West" as it historicly used to be, when now a lot more happens east of China.

That used to be Japan | Korea | Taiwan...and look now

They still keep the know-how and the factories/facilities in China, even if they got the design from somewhere else.

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