Dave,

You have made some very valid points and particularly about experience with
other processors. I have already expressed most of these myself.  However,
the exercise is just a small part of the overall assessment and was never
going to be used in the final judgement.  The position(s) also requires
detailed knowledge of hardware as well so the overall package of skills is
important.  We need someone to hit the ground running rather than spend
precious time retraining.

Thanks for the useful input.

David

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Dilatush
> Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 11:45 PM
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: [PIC]: Programmer
>
>
> David,
>
> I would hardly call myself a "PIC guru" (my experience consists of one
> released commercial product using a PIC16C774, one under development
> using a PIC18C452, and a few hobby projects with PIC16F877s and
> PIC16F84s), but it is for precisely that reason that I have to tell you
> that all three sample questions you gave are trivially easy- without any
> reference to a PIC data sheet or the MRRF.
>
> I'm sure that others can, and will, give you a large assortment of good
> PIC questions to flesh out your interview questionnaire, but I have to
> voice some doubt about whether you'll learn anything very significant
> from the results.  They may even be misleading.
>
> Just my opinion--and I may be way off base, I know--but my own
> experience is that familiarity with a variety of microprocessors other
> than PICs can be just as valuable as familiarity with PICs themselves;
> in my own work I found that prior experience with the MC68HC11, MC6800,
> the 6502, CDP1802 and (reaching back a few years, here) the CP1600
> allowed me to very quickly get up to speed on my first PIC product.  If
> I were out to hire someone to develop PIC assembly language code for the
> application you describe, I would probably give preference to candidates
> with breadth and depth of experience over those with experience only
> with PICs.
>
> In the application you describe, I would cite control theory and user
> interface design as the two areas most prone to jeopardising development
> progress due to inexperience or lack of knowledge- not familiarity with
> PICs.
>
> As I said, the above is pure opinion, so take it for what it's worth.
>
> Dave Dilatush
>

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