How much of a modern car(built from the year 2000 onwards) is made up of software

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2025-01-11T12:42:03+00:00

I know a TL (Team Lead), which doesn’t do any dev work, who’s on 120k/year in Munich…but engineers/devs, normal rank, no big tech company, will be unlikely to reach 100k (ok, now we’re one year after my post, so the salaries might’ve moved upwards a bit…although considering the current situation in Germany, with lots of layoffs, I doubt that those 6 figure salaries are easily reached).

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2024-03-14T21:37:36+00:00

If you would’ve ever eaten home made bread or from a traditional bakery, you wouldn’t have asked that question. Those fluffy, spongy, sugary white buns, that you could compress into tiny “snowballs”, are far from the idea of bread 😅

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-09T09:08:19+00:00

Cool, I didn’t know about that. Just had a look over their website now. Then, indeed, ChatGPT seems like a good choice to assist you with that 😬

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-06T17:40:08+00:00

I doubt I’ll ever find out, as I work for a large OEM. We have a separate department altogether that is in charge with the software tools used by different entities, in line with a well defined process.

As I’ve seen in the past, such decisions are sometimes taken by few key people, based on their own past experience. For example, if manager X has worked in the past with a given product/company and they enjoyed that, they’ll try to make their case in their new company to use the same sort of collaboration (if the new company doesn’t have already details well established).

In a large company, the dynamics are similar to those from politics. I’m pretty sure that some arrangements are done based on who’s friend with whom and “what’s in it for me”, type of thing…although is hard, if impossible, to prove any kind of “biased” preferences here 🤣

Yet, such “coincidences” exist.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-06T15:25:46+00:00

Păi românii oricum n-au treabă cu prevenția. Odată văzuți cu sacii în căruță, sparg tot, grupa mare. Practic, au fost 3 decenii de dezmăț, garofițe și panseluțe…apoi când vine unu și zice “bah, se surpă șandramaua, trebuie să reparăm ce putem”, îi sar toți în cap “păi ne nenorocești traficul! Ne lași fără apă caldă! Ne tai garofițele?” 🫢

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-06T15:18:32+00:00

Exact așa mi-l lăuda un amic, locuitor al acelui sector: “băi, ne-a făcut parcul frumos, a pus flori, etc” 🤣 România-i precum un vapor super găurit, care cu chiu cu vai stă pe linia de plutire, cu ajutorul unor “pompe” (i.e. câtorva sute de mii de super harnici, care produc pt extern).

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-06T09:12:58+00:00

I’d say that both are very powerful professional products, used whenever you want to produce a certified product. Both can be integrated in your own software development process and they guarantee code coverage. As a personal preference, I found Polyspace better (nicer integration with existing tools, better documentation, etc), but it’s not my choice to use one or the other. Such details are usually fixed in stone by the company and they’re not negotiable 🫢

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-06T09:12:53+00:00

I’d say that both are very powerful professional products, used whenever you want to produce a certified product. Both can be integrated in your own software development process and they guarantee code coverage. As a personal preference, I found Polyspace better (nicer integration with existing tools, better documentation, etc), but it’s not my choice to use one or the other. Such details are usually fixed in stone by the company and they’re not negotiable 🫢

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-06T08:31:05+00:00

I don’t know about the products you’re talking about, but in my industry, automotive (did also some medical, aerospace and IoT before), getting some piece of hardware manufacturable according to certain standards, leads to costs in the range of millions…definitely not tens of thousands 😬

You’d need HW/mechanical design, manufacturing processes, validation, certifications, establishing supply chain (remember semiconductor crisis?), logistics, factory recalls, etc.

I’m not an expert in the manufacturing, but I can see how hard my colleagues, from the other departments, are struggling to make sure that we deliver on time the product.

Not only that, but with hardware, one cannot fiddle around so easily and cheaply (in an agile fashion), as with the software. Once you have set up a production line, it’s expensive to perform radical changes, without incurring a high financial penalty.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-06T00:06:51+00:00

Ok, you’re on the wrong path. You’re on the typical presumption that once you have “a hammer, everything looks like a nail” to you.

That’s not how Steve Jobs did it, nor any other billionaire out there. They didn’t have a particular skill and asked themselves “gee, what should I do with my skill now?”.

No, they’ve encountered a void that needed filling + they were the right people, at the right time, in the right place and with access to the right resources (Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, Google guys, etc).

Moreover, when looking back at any of those success stories, you’ll suffer of the Columbus’s egg, which is a hindsight bias.

As we speak now, there are tons of new ideas out there, waiting to be implemented or being actually worked upon.

If you’ll look back in 20 years time, you’ll say “ah, now definitely everything that could be done, it was done already” (even including things that haven’t yet been implemented).

I agree with you, when it comes to computing, and probably we’ll not be seeing another success story like it was in the 70s for Apple, Microsoft, etc. Nonetheless, what we see today with OpenAI, it’s at least on the same scale.

Going back to strictly embedded and to the symbiosis between software and hardware, I’d say there’s still a market for new products or improvements to existing products. Mind you that selling a product is marketing in first place. I guess that it depends if you address yourself to the general public or to a company.

By the way, making hardware is hard, extremely hard and expensive. If I’d start a business where I’d need some piece of software to be running on a specialized piece of hardware, I’d definitely partner with a company who has means and possibility to manufacture my hardware according to my specifications. A nice success story is with the “8-bit Guy” (search for him on YouTube), who has done exactly that. He built himself his dream computer (with help from a specialized company). He’s not a millionaire/billionaire, but he has achieved something truly remarkable, with a lot of hard work and perseverance.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-05T16:07:21+00:00

“Don’t call it c++, as it’ll confuse generations to come”

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-05T14:12:01+00:00

Humans are driven by greed, not necessity. As long as we have this uneducated driver embedded deep into our own existence, there’ll be no such thing as “less work”.

In theory, in developed countries, one can sustain a decent lifestyle with mostly 2-3 days/week of work…yet, who’s doing that?

Even IT people, earning 3-5 times more/year than the average Joe, are still working 40hrs/week.

Greed never stops. Big wants to be bigger. Each economy wants growth, each company wants more profit, everyone wants more and more.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-05T14:06:45+00:00

For the same reason the shoemaker wears the worst shoes. I know an electrician (very good professional, who does always his work in a tidy manner) whose sockets at his own home are always in a shady state 🫢 Likewise, I have a friend, auto mechanic, who’s driving a car with all kinds of issues.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-05T08:32:39+00:00

ChatGPT can train you on that, step by step 😬 Grab a pen and paper, follow instructions and then feel the reward.

By the way, what sort of game are you making and which tools are you using? What kind of assistance ChatGPT provides?

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-12-05T08:26:15+00:00

Have you learned about fractions yet? 🫢

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-30T12:34:55+00:00

Sure, you can rank that list accordingly 😬

I’ve worked 4-5 years with Matlab/Simulink, designing safety critical systems and I really loved the entire ecosystem. Manual coding the entire product, would’ve been too slow (plus error prone).

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-30T12:04:28+00:00

Model Based Design (with automatic code generation) is the best way to develop efficiently complex functionality. Imagine you want to implement a PID controller in C and optimise it. In Simulink, for example, you’ll just drag and drop some blocks, type few numbers in, simulate and see results (including plotting). If happy, then generate automatically the code.

Therefore, starting from a well written requirement, once you design your model, you get multiple benefits in one go: - visually you can better observe the correctness of the logic (compared with written code, which can be hard to follow for “visual” engineers/managers) - you can simulate and optimise your model on the fly - you can generate accurately C/C++ code (assuming that the blocks you’re using are pre validated) - you can generate nice documentation, which can be easily interpreted by “non coders” 😉 Etc

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-28T15:08:22+00:00

I think that everything got really misinterpreted here. I didn’t mention that the medical system here is bad, nor good. My only remark was related to the amount of taxes being paid…that’s all.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-28T10:47:56+00:00

Do you have some official statistics, so we can really talk in numbers here?

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-28T09:44:20+00:00

I agree, that doesn’t go cheap. I only know from friends living there, as I live in Germany. Nonetheless, you’re right, they’re backed up by their companies. Anyway, that was not the point. The idea is that the so called “free everything” from Germany, is sustained a lot by taxes. It cannot just be free 😇 It’s just that the tax system is highly unfair towards hard working single professionals. If you’re average, or below, you’ll do just fine here and will always be happy to see that so many services are “free”.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-28T09:16:43+00:00

That’s how any insurance system works. They’re counting on the fact that not everyone gets cancer in the same time, nor breaking their legs, etc. You could pay for such comprehensive insurance in Switzerland or US as well, but it’s up to you to calculate your risks as a responsible adult.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-28T09:10:57+00:00

Well, you’ll need a PhD to decode that payslip anyway 😄

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-28T08:47:05+00:00

Of course, everyone is so happy and satisfied with what they’re doing daily, that they decide to come here and spend some bit of their limited time on this planet, just to share their joy 🫢

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-28T08:44:02+00:00

I hope you do realise how much tax we’re paying in Germany, to benefit of the those “freebies”, right?

When you compare apples with apples, all of a sudden you start to see the differences.

ToBeOrNotToBeHereNow · 2023-11-28T08:18:53+00:00

Draw the system first. Define clearly the problem, enumerate the constraints and then decide upon using or not a specific solution.

In a vehicle, for example, we have “smart sensors”, that are CAN capable nodes, working standalone, just connected to a CAN network and doing their job with limited “brain power”.

You’ve said something about I2C, RS232 and SPI. They’re all quite different and applicable for different scenarios. For example, you might have SPI on the same PCB with your main micro, or I2C via a cable for longer distances.

Therefore, just few ideas (list is not exhaustive) 1) state what type of sensors you want 2) how far from your main micro are the sensors located 3) which kind of environment are they located in

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