OT: Language for the ages

[a.carlini at ntlworld.com]

Mark Tapley wrote:
> 	I am depressed at how difficult it has become for any one
> person to really understand either all of the hardware or all of the
> software (let alone both) in any commodity system, whether controller
> or desktop. 

That's because commodity stuff has become more complex. You can still
understand stuff from 20 years ago as easily as you could 20 years ago
(assuming you knew enough then, obviously).

> Two more decades in that direction, and who'll know
> *what* is "under the hood"?

The engineers building X usually know how X works. There's
probably no one person at my place of work who knows
*everything* about all of the hardware and software, but there's
always *someone* who knows whatever it is I happen to need
to know. Admittedly the PSUs and batteries are bought in
(as are the chips :-)) but if we really needed to know more
than the datasheets tell us, we could find out.

Antonio


-- 

Antonio carlini
arcarlini at iee.org