Hacker News Reader

Comment by crb3 | Hacker News Reader

Any word on whether / how well that Windows-only IDE performs on WINE in Linux? (Hint to Cypress: that Windows-only thing is a dealbreaker for enough of us that you really should address it.)

View on HN

Cypress has shipped over 1,700,000,000 of these chips since introduction. Asking for PSoC Designer/Creator in another OS will probably be met with a very large shrug.

You're probably right, but Windows-only stopped me in my tracks too. I won't bother trying this, because the advantages over an Arduino mini pro (more memory, a snappy USB interface) don't seem to justify the pain of struggling with serial interfaces in WINE.

And although the vast majority of these devices will be going to big industrial users, if I was Cypress I'd consider the cost of developing Linux/Mac versions against the prospect of losing a generation of tinkerers to Atmel.

I made an offhand remark about wanting a Linux-compatible IDE in a Cypress survey for educational users a few years ago. Surprisingly, I received a detailed response from a senior manager about some of the reasons that they've stuck with a Windows-only system. They were well aware of the interest from Linux users, but had made a business decision to focus on making their IDE work really well, even if only on one OS.

I generally understand the motivation of these companies, but damn I really hate that they all build IDEs. I wish they would focus on command-line tools or libraries and integration with (say) eclipse for those that really want an IDE. Having a different half-assed IDE for each hardware platform makes for a frustrating day at work

Build automation for embedded systems is such a PITA. My previous job we had a build step that used AutoHotKey to click through the manufacturers 'proprietary tools'. You can imagine how reliable that was

Reply on news.ycombinator.com