[Interest] thanks for extra reading suggestions - sorry to insult technical writers

[Syam Krishnan]

On 04/13/2012 02:16 AM, Till Oliver Knoll wrote:
> Am 12.04.12 14:09, schrieb Mark Griffith:
>
>> I think there are lots of complex areas of
>> knowledge - for example I cannot imagine that electronics - teaching
>> circuit designers how to keep unwanted impedance under control for
>> example - is an order of magnitude simpler than software writing.
> It is. Even though electric circuits are immenselly complicated
> circuits, they all operate according to the same Boolean Logic which is
> fairly easy to understand for every first year student. Heck, that's
> part of any software engineering study, how a CPU etc. works, how to
> compute voltage.
>
> The rest is beating physics and trying to get the production as
> cost-effective as possible.
>
> Challenging, but not as complex and abstract as software engineering.

I just had to respond to this. You went a little overboard with this. 
Haven't you heard of all the analog electronics where
there's no concept of boolean logic? It is a common misconception among 
software programmers that electronics is mainly made
to create computers with lots of AND/OR/XOR gates and nothing else. This 
is probably because they have been taught only that part of
electronics which lets them use logic gates. Analog filters, power 
electronics etc. are typically overlooked.

When I was in college, Richard Stallman had given us a lecture. He said 
something towards this:
"We, software engineers or programmers, sometimes have the easiest of 
jobs. An electronics engineer, for instance, has to worry if he'll have 
sufficient
voltage when he connects one part of the circuit to another; whether the 
first circuit will be able to drive the next stage. We on the other hand 
can put almost infinite number of nested 'if's or loops without ever 
worrying if the outer loop will be able to drive the inner one...."

So, the idea that writing software is more complex than designing an 
electronic circuit is just based on lack of knowledge/experience on 
electronics.

regards,

Syam