Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!tada
From: tada@athena.mit.edu (Michael Zehr)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: H/W vs. S/W
Message-ID: <3867@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 18 Mar 88 16:25:16 GMT
References: <2586@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> <1396@ur-tut.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: tada@athena.mit.edu (Michael Zehr)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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I was discussing this with a friend recently, and he mentioned another
difference between H/W and S/W which may account for varying reliability.

With S/W, the "turnaround" time is typically compile time.  A programmer
can make changes and almost immediately see what the difference are.

With H/W, the "turnaround" time is the time it takes to make a new chip, which
is *much* longer.

So... the hardware people have to be very certain that there work is correct
because iterations through the design/test/modify loop are much longer and 
more expensive.  This forces them to check their work very carefully.  
Programmers on the other hand can have the liberty of being careless.  They
can try something and see if it works, as opposed to design something that
works and then try it to verify that it works.  

Now I'm not saying that all programmers are more sloppy than all hardware
engineers, but this could make programmers tend to be more careless.
(I know, I'm one of them -- I typically keep my compiler running almost
continuously :-)


-------
michael j zehr
"My opinions are my own ... as is my spelling."