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Comment by xradionut | Hacker News Reader

My background is in hardware, especially RF, and it's fun to talk to pure software guys that "understand" RF and radios just because they set up a wireless network at their apartment or made a cantenna. I invite them to hang out with some world class engineers that I've worked for in the past that design microwave networks, test semiconductors, cell systems or technical ilk of that caliber. You really aren't experienced in the field without 30,000 hours of dedicated effort.

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"My background is in software, especially programming, and it's fun to talk to pure hardware guys that "understand" programming and programs just because they installed a linux box at their apartment or made a web page. I invite them to hang out with some world class engineers that I've worked for in the past that create compilers, test distributed systems, maintain and evolve widely used libraries or technical ilk of that caliber."

I'm sure you didn't intend to put down software development as being less complex or less difficult than hardware. The challenges are different and it's true that people from one field tend to underestimate the issues of the other.

Are you concerned that at some point it will be possible for people to buy a tiny but fully fledged computer and let software developers create gadgets that do their job but are not real hardware ? Does this mean that people will appreciate less the real work behind creating the actual device that makes it possible?

The advent of complete operating systems make it possible for people to easily create, debug and test programs without sweating. Certainly lowering the bar made it possible for more incompetent people to produce lower quality products.

Working in the layer that enables other people to build on a solid foundation and create stuff more easily without having to reinvent the wheel every time is more difficult but rewarding, and it's easily seen by people in each field as the "true $field".

So it's not software vs hardware, it's about hard vs soft problems, core vs peripheral issues, enabling vs business logic.

I can't speak for xradionut obviously, but he specifically said RF, not "hardware", so your statements are not equivalent. RF is a different beast, and its peculiarities do make just about any RF problem more complex and more difficult than most software problems. Hell, they are more complex and more difficult than most other EE problems as well and the original statement could have been applied to digital design engineers without losing any meaning.

sure, but my point is that it's not because $field_a is easier than $field_b, but since $field_a allows to hack something up quickly even by inexperienced people, there is the feeling that $field_b is harder and more worthy just because it's difficult to get anything done without working hard.

Replace $field_a and $field_b with (guitar, sitar), (piano, violin), (digital design, rf), (software, hardware), (python script, kernel programming), .....

yet in every of $field_a there are masters whose work is at least as exciting and worth praise (if not even more) than most those that master $field_b. Although it's true that $field_b requires more skill in average to enter.

Maybe I am looking at this differently, but I would say that by definition what you describe makes $field_b harder than $field_a. I don't think the difficulty of the field has any bearing on its worthiness, though.

I'm not belittling software, since that's my current field of employment. And there's a large number of tough software issues that require years of experience.

The point that the OP in the linked article makes is that is a few guys with a few years of modest experience in programming can go create a company worth 8 to 9 figures on the market with few resources other than time and luck and connections.

He then states that this isn't possible in the semiconductor world due to the amount of experience required in that field. I've worked in the semiconductor industry and I agree 100%. I've also worked in RF and it's the same. There's no successful equivalent in those realms that compares to something like Twitter or most of acquisition bait out there. The amount and complexity of the knowledge is insane. (Not to mention the manpower...)

And from a guy who's worked the whole stack from component level to user applications; Python scripting is a couple of orders of magnitude easier than debugging firmware or dealing with DSP code/math or testing semiconductors/antennas. Doesn't require a doctorate to build websites or develop CRUD applications.

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