Software is Eating Hardware – Lessons for Building Magical Devices
firstround.com
firstround.com
It is? Am I the one in a bubble here or are the writers of this article in some strange feedback loop?
It's not just these writers...
When's the last time you saw something that wasn't described as beautiful or revolutionary? You know it's bad when Silicon Valley spends an entire scene on the breathless "change the world" superlatives of startup culture [1].
1: http://readwrite.com/2014/05/20/silicon-valley-hbo-episode-7...
Journalists should know better than throwing around weasel phrases like these. Consumer devices like the Pencil are outside the scope of interest, let alone work, of most hardware and embedded software engineers, and it has changed exactly nothing about the field in general, thus hardly making it "revolutionary".
I'm not seeing any attribution at all as far as who put together this post, could have been a summer intern. Hard to believe (because of no attribution) that it's anyone at first round of any significance.
Edit: Just saw carbocations comment re: bylines below.
I came upon this while looking for the author. I think it's too bad they don't use bylines. It matters to me whether the person who wrote this is their co-founder, a capitalist, an engineer, etc.
Rather than not using bylines, I'd prefer that they name the author as well as the reviewers and other contributors, much as Paul Graham does.
Hardware people have to get it right first time and generally have better engineering discipline. They are also supported better by their tools (software tooling is crappy at best compared to say SolidWorks or an EDA platform).
Software people tend to accept a fuck up on day one and fix it later approach.
Hardware and software people need to work together. Someone with battle scars from both arenas needs to lead as they understand the compromises at both ends and can direct the product.
Software isn't eating hardware.
Uh ... have you ever had to use Cadence Virtuoso? If not, consider yourself lucky.
They company I worked for ended up writing their own layout/simulation platform after a bout of Cadence and got absorbed into Mentor Graphics.
Having worked in this sort of environment, this scares me a bit. Software creeps a LOT more easily than hardware. It's too easy for a software person to ask for "small" upgrades that end up being much more trouble than they're worth: upgrading to faster processors, more capacity memory, etc, it can be a real pain. There has to be a balance, and I'm not anxious to have a software person direct a hardware team again.
Are we missing an aspect here? I feel like we are missing something. I was pretty certain hardware had more aspects that make it compelling than design and packaging.
The 'Pencil' product is a good example of the points made in the article. It's a souped-up stylus with some nice features and pretty hardware. But for it to be a sellable and desirable product at $75, it has to tie in well with software. Its app seems to be nice and well-received. They also have a printing service and incorporate social aspects where people share their creations.
It's not uncommon to buy hardware, that on the face of it is very nice, and /would/ be good to use, but getting it to work with your software is just an annoyance. Any company that can convince you going in that the software will be nice to use, is going to have an advantage.
After this experience, the mechanical engineers and software engineers worked together to ensure that there was a comprehensive API for the machines so that software could fix, modify, or enhance the machines operation.
yeah, some of these days Musk will reprogram it to fly with existing hardware. I gotta find out which language these guys are using.
He's not talking about operating systems or embedded systems type stuff, right?
But I think he means someone with the same skill set but a traditional CS background. Not that I quite see what that buys you.