[skrebbel]

All hardware companies I've seen on the inside are like this. Philips, FEI, Cisco, ASML, Océ. Somehow, when software isn't the only part that matters, people stick their heads in the sand and pretend like the 1980's never ended. I've given up trying to figure out why or change it.

It's the only reason I only do web stuff now. I like both domains, but the hardware / embedded software industries are just retarded.

[nappy-doo]

Longtime embedded engineer here:

There is a reason they are "retarded" (BTW, please don't use that word). It comes down to the following:

1) Embedded engineers are generally EE that have taken a course or two in software. Generally they are the "best software guys" from a group of middling to poor software guys. As such, they reach for tools they are familiar with.

2) The product from embedded engineering is much different from web development. It might ship on a ROM, for a part with < 64kRAM. In circumstances such as this, knowing your toolchain won't add any complexities you don't understand is very important, and it doesn't get much simpler than C. (Also, most good embedded engineers use a restricted set of C that doesn't include things like printf and malloc.)

[skrebbel]

> BTW, please don't use that word

Good point. I won't anymore.

Your experience matches with mine (especially point 1). It's a sad state of affairs, really.

Wrt point two, true, but these days there's a vanishingly small number of problems that can only be solved cost-efficiently on microcontrollers and C.

My favourite example is ASML, world market leader in chip machines, which sell at millions of dollars a piece and could be specced to have any computing power needed, effectively, and has a software stack of 30 million lines of C.

Running on microcontrollers and Sun Solaris computers.

[dvirsky]

I think it has more to do with the first point. That's the culture, and culture tends to perpetuate itself, especially if it's a big corp where people stick around way longer than in startups, and it's a much bigger burden to switch tools.

[a3voices]

I used to work at Cisco, and I have the exact same opinions.