From: Ryan O'Connor <rocifier@gmail.com>
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public. <piclist@mit.edu>
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Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2020 13:12:58 -0800
Subject: Re: [EE]: How to find & hire firmware people
Thread-Topic: [EE]: How to find & hire firmware people
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Thanks James that's a really generous comment; much appreciated. In regards
to web developers, in the very least we need to be constantly learning and
adapting since the web is moving so fast. But I definitely recognise
firmware is it's own beast and skillset in very much the same way. It does
take experience and some training.

What I didn't mention was when I was working on the graphics demos there
was an engineer there who worked for AMD who were really breaking into the
market as a big player at the time. His stuff was super next level, he was
able to write all kinds of 3d raytracing demos within code size limitations
which performed well and were just damn cool and interesting. His level of
understanding of instructions and mathematics was incomprehensible to most
of us. For anyone interested, this scene has (ironically) shifted to the
web now, with opengl shaders being supported in browsers. Googling
"shadertoy" will find the most popular active demo archive where all code
is available and many study examples are available. I hate to admit it but
many of the demos now are even more impressive with less shader code than
back in those days. But that's also the evolution of GPU architecture for
you. And that's not even mentioning that very soon 3D games will be
enhanced with real-time ray tracing as a norm (hardware is already
affordable and not a gimmick:
https://www.windowscentral.com/10-graphics-cards-support-ray-tracing)



On Wed, 18 Nov 2020 at 09:51, James Cameron <quozl@laptop.org> wrote:

> Thanks Ryan, a great read.
>
> I'm also reminded that applicants for a role experience the
> Dunning-Kruger effect combined with a simple confirmation bias.
>
> Web developers are a cut above the average dish washer; they
> understand procedural languages, computer networking, software
> layering, and standards.  What they don't know for a firmware role can
> be learned, but an employer may want to pay for that training to occur
> before hiring rather than after.
>
> p.s. my web development skills have atrophied, as has my COBOL, but my
> firmware skills are worth testing.  Hire me.  ;-)
>
> --
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.netrek.org/
> --
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