Hardware Podcasts

436: 20 GOTO 10

Embedded.fm · 2 Dec 2022 · 1h 21m · Episode 436

What this episode covers

Guest Chris Svec discusses how his nine-year-old son, 'The Kid,' learned to program by transitioning from playing video games to creating them in Scratch, using resources like DigiPen's YouTube tutorials and books by Jason Rukman and Al Sweigart. The hosts and guest then evaluate Joel Spolsky's 'Joel Test' for software company health, discussing the relevance of its 12 questions—such as source control, single-step builds, and bug databases—to modern engineering practices and hiring. They also touch on the value of block-based coding for kids and the importance of clear communication in professional settings.

Most relevant to

makers and hobbyists

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
DigiPen, Fog Creek Software, Stack Overflow, National Instruments
Products
LEGO Mindstorms, Makey Makey, micro:bit, Commodore 64, Apple II
Tools
Scratch, LabVIEW, IAR, Keil, Bugzilla
Also
Joel Test, Joel Spolsky, JavaScript for Kids, The Everything Kids' Scratch Coding Book, Scratch Programming Playground, griffpatch

Related episodes from other shows

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • The Pragmatic Embedded Podcast · 38m

    The Matthew Test with Matthew Eshleman - Part 1

    Matthew Eshleman, a principal embedded software engineer and consultant formerly at Toshiba, joins Jeff Gable and Luca to discuss his 'Matthew Test,' a 15-step checklist for evaluating embedded software teams. Modeled after Joel Spolsky's Joel Test, the episode covers foundational practices such as using source control (specifically Git), automating build and release processes, and implementing continuous integration. Eshleman argues that unlike web development, embedded engineering requires 'reasonably complete specifications' and early risk management due to the high cost and long lifecycle of hardware changes.

    Embedded firmwareEDA & CAD tools
    6 chapters

  • The Pragmatic Embedded Podcast · 39m

    Christmas Special

    Hosts Jeff Gable and Luca share war stories from their careers in embedded systems, highlighting the pain of manual testing in helicopter avionics, the chaos of managing requirements with Word and Excel in Dropbox for medical devices, and the technical debt of massive #ifdef blocks in legacy machine tool software. They discuss the industry's slow adoption of modern software practices like version control and CI/CD, contrasting embedded development with web development standards. The episode concludes with book recommendations including 'The Phoenix Project' and 'Team Topologies', and reflections on the future of IoT security and agile adoption in hardware.

    Debugging & failure analysisEmbedded firmware
    6 chapters

  • Oxide and Friends · 1h 47m

    Paths into Systems Programming

    Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal, and other engineers from Oxide Computer Company discuss the nature of systems programming, defining it as software that runs, creates, or debugs other software. The group shares personal anecdotes about entering the field, highlighting the importance of curiosity, rigor, and contributing to open source communities like Joyent and KVM. They emphasize that breaking into systems programming often requires demonstrating deep technical interest through tangible artifacts, such as code contributions or reverse engineering projects, rather than relying solely on traditional credentials.

    Careers & educationOpen-source hardware
    6 chapters

  • Oxide and Friends · 1h 26m

    The Showstopper Show

    Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal of Oxide Computer Company host a discussion with G. Pascal Zachary, author of 'Showstopper!', and Jessamyn West, daughter of Data General engineer Tom West, about the human cost of building Windows NT and the Eclipse minicomputer. Zachary and West analyze how the 'cult of the hotshot programmer' and the lack of modern software engineering practices led to severe personal anguish and family breakdowns for the teams at Microsoft and Data General. The conversation contrasts the 1990s 'battleship' development model with today's open-source, service-oriented software landscape, highlighting the shift from software as a static artifact to a continuous, often stressful, service.

    Careers & educationAI & machine learning
    8 chapters

  • The Amp Hour · 1h 44m

    Pedantic or Andrantic

    Chris Gammell, a developer advocate at Hologram and founder of Contextual Electronics, joins Elecia and Chris White of Embedded.fm to discuss hardware prototyping, learning strategies, and industry tools. The conversation covers the challenges of cellular IoT connectivity, the utility of the HackRF software-defined radio, and debugging techniques using the J-Trace Pro. They also explore pedagogical concepts like the Dreyfus model for learning programming and hardware, emphasizing the importance of iteration and mental health in engineering careers.

    Embedded firmwareDebugging & failure analysis
    7 chapters

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Embedded.fm. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.