Everything always easier?

Making electronics development easier

D&E: Technically speaking: What simplifications does a modern development workflow offer?

Restle: I believe our modern day development stems from two technologies: integrated circuits and object oriented programming (OOP) and I see these two concepts as nearly the same things in different forms. Cohesion and Coupling are two popular concepts in OOP. Cohesion is the relatedness of the parts of an encapsulated unit whether it is a software class, a digital module, or an integrated circuit. High cohesion is better than low cohesion because it makes systems easier to comprehend, to test, to maintain, and more. Coupling is the connectivity or dependence of one software or hardware element on another. Low coupling is better than high coupling because changes can be made to one element with minimal effect on the other. As development workflows continue to advance, this advancement, I believe, will depend on our ability to encapsulate the specialities that those of us have acquired for the use of others. These benefits can only be realized if access to those specialties is simple enough for the non-specialist. In this way, we will build upon each other’s output and improve the standard of living for us all.

D&E: It sounds as if electronics development is getting easier and easier. But in fact, it is becoming more and more difficult and complex...

Restle: It’s gotten frustratingly difficult to keep up with advances in electronics.  There are simply too many details to keep straight in one’s mind. A fact once learned and not used, is a fact forgotten. I am reminded of having to recently look up some long forgotten C programming language syntax. So, whereas my interest is in convincing professionals of the great opportunity to enable non-professionals in making things. This applies equally to professionals who help their peers. Simply put, we need to make complexity easier to access and it is the professionals who have the tools to do this.

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D&E: In your Embedded World keynote, you want to address the leverage effect associated with reducing integration complexity. How can this effect be amplified? Who or which organizations are in a position to coordinate this?

Restle: Someone who is sufficiently talented enough to make an electronic device that others can incorporate into their devices can certainly figure out how to make his device discoverable on the Internet. I believe if it is popular, the world will find it given all the social media channels that exist today. So, I don’t think we can really stop the spread of this. It’s a wonderful time to be an embedded engineer because there are so many people we can help. There was a movie I watched whereby a boy in Africa rigged up a windmill to pump water for irrigation. That kid leveraged the know-how from a book to save his village. This will be less rare in the future and no coordinating organization is required.

D&E: What role does open source play in this scenario?

Restle: Open source enables so much innovation but I don’t believe everything should be »open«. Open source survives based on meritocracy. This is beautiful.  It makes that which is open source very high quality. However, there are technologies that someone might have spent years developing. I believe those developers should be able to benefit from their toil. Some of these technologies might be dangerous if made open. So, I believe open source plays a critically important role in the advancement of technology but I am not a zealot claiming it is the only way to go.

D&E: Probably the most successful project in this area is Raspberry Pi. Is it a role model for other hardware/software projects?

Restle: The Raspberry Pi (RPi) is incredibly important given its millions of units sold worldwide. It has undoubtedly brought people into electronics and improved people’s quality of life through the joy of development and through the benefit of the contraptions made that are based on the RPi. However, as a computer on a board, it is not the only technology the world needs. I note the existence of Arduino and ask why we don’t have something as simple to use for programmable logic design. I hope that projects like RPi, Arduino, Beagle board, MikroBUS, Feather boards, and so many more continue to inspire more baseboard platforms.

The questions were asked by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Axel Sikora, Chairman of the Steering Board of the embedded world Conference and Joachim Kroll.

1. Everything always easier?
2. Making electronics development easier