[jack_h]

I worked at a place once where one of the EEs who wrote firmware told me that algorithms and data structures were pointless because in the end it's just bits in a linear address space in RAM.

The industry has basically screwed itself. It's pretty typical for companies to consider embedded/firmware as EE work that is done in the gaps of the hardware schedule. EEs generally make bad programmers which shouldn't be a surprise as their background is usually not in software development; I similarly shouldn't be hired to do EE work. Because of this the code bases tend to be abysmal in quality.

The salary for these positions tends to be tied to EE salaries which for some reason are quite low. So it's hard to attract good talent willing to deal with the extremely poor code quality and all of the other extra challenges this field has on top of normal software challenges.

Since few software developers are attracted to this niche there's not a lot in terms of libraries or frameworks either, at least not in comparison to most other software ecosystems. I've had a start-up idea for a while now to really close that gap and make embedded development far more sane in terms of feature development and such, but I worry nobody would even bother to use it.

I've been in the embedded space for years now and I've been considering bailing because the problems just aren't worth the pay.

[robomartin]

> one of the EEs who wrote firmware told me that algorithms and data structures were pointless because in the end it's just bits in a linear address space in RAM.

This is, of course, wrong. However, I think I understand where this EE was coming from.

At the end of the day, once all is said and done, there's a minimal set of instructions necessary for a CPU to perform any task. One could add to that two more variables: minimum time and minimum resources (which is generally understood to be memory).

So, at least three optimization vectors: instructions, time and resources.

Today's bloated software, where everything is layers upon layers of object-oriented code, truly is pointless from the perspective of a CPU solving a problem along a stated combination of the three vectors listed above.

The way I think of this is: OO exists to make the programmer's life easier, not because it is necessary.

I believe this statement to be 100% correct. OO isn't a requirement for solving any computational problem at all.

Of course, this cannot be extended to algorithms. That part of the EE's is likely indefensible.

How about data structures?

Some, I'd say. Again, if the data structure exists only to make it easier for the programmer, one could argue it being unnecessary or, at the very least, perhaps not optimal from the perspective of the three optimization vectors.

[reachableceo]

I’m interested in your startup idea .

I’m needing todo some highly complex embedded development for my startup in a highly regulated safety critical space.

[jack_h]

It's nothing groundbreaking, although my idea alone wouldn't really help in the safety critical space.

If web development were like embedded development every single company would be building their own web server, browser, and protocol the two communicate over. It would take a phenomenal amount of time and the actual end product, the website, would be rushed out the door at the very tail end of this massive development effort. As the complexity of the website grows, the worse it gets. All of the features being sold to customers take a backseat to the foundational work that costs the company money either through initial development or ongoing maintenance. Plus there's very little in the way of transferable skills since everything tends to be bespoke from the ground up which poses a problem when hiring.

In this analogy that base layer is really just hardware support. This is starting to change with projects like mbed, zephyr, etc. There's still a lot to be desired here and these realistically only work in a subset of the embedded space.

My idea comes in after this. Keeping with the analogy, consider it Ruby on Rails or NodeJS for the embedded world. Certainly not appropriate for all things, but a lot of what I have worked on professionally would benefit from this.

[intelVISA]

> one of the EEs who wrote firmware told me that algorithms and data structures were pointless because in the end it's just bits in a linear address space in RAM.

He might be onto something you know...