Saturday, June 09, 2007

Years ago I lived in a Smalltalk world and never knew how good I had it.  As Larry O’Brien says, “Smalltalk has enough proponents so you're probably at least aware that it's browser and persistent workspace are life-altering (if you aren't, check out James Robertson's series of screencasts).

 

Unfortunately, in the Great White North, not too many Smalltalk jobs were available and in fact it really boiled down to programming Windows or Unix.  And somehow I found myself in the Windows world using Visual Studio and Visual Basic.  In some respects, VB was almost Smalltalk like – I loved the interpreter of stepping through code, finding a mistake, fixing it on the spot, setting next statement to run a few lines back and stepping through and keep on going.  I found myself enjoying the rhythm of it and how productive I was.  That was the thrill for me.

 

Then came C# which is a statically typed language, but what really got me was the rote of write code, compile it, fix compile errors, then compile it again, fix runtime errors, compile it again, step through, note the error, stop debugging, edit code, compile it again, etc.  As you can imagine from the VB world, the most common error I got was, “are you missing a cast?”  Also, my productivity just was nowhere near as fast.

 

A year or so ago, I came across IronPython.  What I loved immediately was the interactive console that interpreted code on the fly.  I type in my line of code and execute it with immediate results.  For me, I work best like this.  It allows me to experiment with CLR types and once I have it figured, I can then cut n paste into a code file and build up my application.

 

What is really exciting to me is that the DLR is intended to support a variety of dynamic languages, such as IronRuby by John Lam and others… yes, even Smalltalk.  Way to go Peter Fisk!

 

Saturday, June 09, 2007 3:12:41 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
 Tuesday, March 27, 2007
In 1980 I worked for an advanced R&D electronics company that produced datasets and switches from initial paper napkin design, to engineering prototypes, to full on production manufacturing. One of my roles was to design the printed circuit board layout, commonly referred to in the biz as the artwork.  I did this by laying down various decals on a transparent Mylar sheet that represented where the electronic components would go and then I would lay down traces (red and blue tape for a double-sided board) which represents the electrical connection between components.
 
I used an electronic circuit schematic diagram to read the electrical connections and mark off each trace that I put down on the layout design (i.e. artwork).  The scale was 4 times the size of the physical printed circuit board that the design would eventually become copper traces and the physical components would get plugged into the board and soldered. 
 
From a process perspective, I had to shoot a negative (or positive) of the finished Mylar printed circuit board layout design that was reduced by 4 times.  This positive was then physically laid on a flat solid layer copper printed circuit board template that was photosensitive, so that under a UV light, the board was exposed and then the board had the photographic imprint of the design on it.  The exposed board is submerged into a caustic chemical soup that would etch away the copper on the board except where it was exposed by the positive.  I end up with a printed circuit board as a replica of what was on the positive design, Mylar layout design and ultimately the circuit diagram, with no loss in translation.  Next hand-drill the holes in the printed circuit board and load it up with all of the electronic components, which I soldered in.  Finally, mounting the board in its case and voila, a finished prototype ready for testing.
 
The printed circuit board layouts I designed had some 200 electronic components including a microprocessor, many ICs and several analog components plus hundreds of traces.  It took about 8 weeks of effort times 8 hour days to actually layout a circuit design of this size and complexity.  Then it took a few days to get the positive shot, another week or so to get the board etched and another week or so before you had the board masked, drilled, parts loaded, soldered and it was in the test rack in the lab.
 
In 1980, this was a manual labor intensive process, working at a light table for almost 2 months straight. Add another month to finish prototype.  Kinda reminds me of the process of developing modern day software prototypes.
 
And then in 1982, a specialized computer arrived at my desk with a Computer Aided Design (CAD) program for designing printed circuit board layouts. It did not replace my job.  Instead I became a computer operator that required specialized domain knowledge (i.e. printed circuit board layout design).  It took a while to figure it all out, but it did reduce my manual effort from 8 weeks down to a couple of days.  This was a significant productivity increase that I gladly welcomed.
 
You programmed the CAD application by entering in your electronic components (mported from a Bill of Materials list with some metadata) and then drawing the traces (actually using a light pen to touch one component lead to another on a graphical display) and the computer would figure out the width of the trace based on how much current was required (if you loaded Bill of Materials metadata) and auto-routed the trace in the most efficient way by trying hundreds of combinations and rearranging other traces, each time a trace sequence was inputted  
 
What does this mean?  It means that the level of abstraction for solving this particular problem was raised significantly with the introduction of a highly specialized CAD program.  Measuring my involvement with this technology using the Technology Adoption Curve, I would be classified as an early adopter of this innovative and disruptive technology according to Geoffrey Moore.  This technology approach radically changed the way printed circuit board layouts were designed thereafter.
 
Today, some 25 years later, printed circuit boards are still laid out requiring humans to develop the design, but the level of abstraction and automation is unbelievable.  One only has to investigate the ASIC world to see how industrialized this industry has truly become. We have abstracted this specialized process so much that major chunks of designs are reused and assembled from massive libraries built upon standards.  This is how mature this industry is.  Back to the printed circuit board design, the standards based CAD output file is directly interpreted by a Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) device that can output a completely etched, masked, drilled printed circuit board with parts placed by robotics and wave soldered, all in a matter of minutes.
 
At that time in the 80s I saw various parts of the electronics engineering design and manufacturing world go through a small industrial revolution with these highly specialized CAD CAM technologies that have now evolved to the point where DVD players are $30.00.  Who would have guessed?  It was not that long ago that an HP-41c calculator was $600.
 
Following opportunities in the electronics design industry, I got into the