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My Business Card Runs Linux

thirtythreeforty.net

241–250 of 415 posts

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that compiler speed is all a matter of how it was initially designed. Take for example Delphi which can compile millions of lines of code in under a minute or something ridiculous. Then we have D, Go, Rust, and such, they compile rather large codebases that would take C++ a good 30 minutes on high end hardware of today in shorter spans of time (not as familiar with how fast Rust compiles, but I know Go…

Rust doesn't compile very fast unfortunately, but it's being worked on. General wisdom says it's about as fast as Clang but comparing compile speeds across languages in a meaningful way is difficult

Fair enough, thanks for that, I wasn't sure, all my Rust programs have been small enough to where I havent noticed. I wonder if it would of made sense for Rust to consider this earlier on in the same way that Pascal did. I believe I heard Pascal was designed to be parsed easily by machine code.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#242
post #17
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading the post, i was under the impression that the author really did some shopping for major components and assembled everything into a fun shape. Obviously i know nothing about electronic board design, so could you explain which extraordinary skill this required ? EDIT : ok, i missed the part where he actually designed the whole board, obviously..

Embedded systems engineers are (usually) paid a lot less than full stack engineers. Edit: I seem to be getting (a lot!) of downvotes on this. I thought it was quite well known, but apparently not. Full Stack Engineer salary: $93,598 [1] Embedded Software Engineer salary: $74,758[2] [1] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Full_Stack_Engineer... [2] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Embedded_Engineer/S...

> Embedded Software Engineer salary: $74,758

> Individuals Reporting: 97

> Full Stack Engineer salary: $93,598

> Individuals Reporting: 138

I think you're going to need more than 100 or so people's self-reported salaries before you can reasonably claim what pay is like across the professions or in comparison to each other.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#244
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling this embedded system feels like insult to the spirit of 'running light without overbyte', because it's so comically capable. My first PC had 66/33 MHz 80486 processor and 8 MB ram, 320 MB HDD. You could run AutoCAD, play Doom, Civilization, have dual boot for Linux, Windows 3.11 etc. It could compile Linux from source.

You were living large! My first Linux computer was a 20Mhz 80386SX with a 40MB hard drive partitioned half for Windows 3.0 and half for Linux (SLS) and swap. It had a whopping 4MB of RAM and I also compiled my own kernel making sure to trim down features as much as possible. It was magic seeing X11 come up for the first time just like the big-bucks Sun boxes!

Hah, you had it great! My first PC was a 286, which IIRC either had no HDD, OR. 20MB HDD (might be mixing it with our next PC, which was a 386).

I'm pushing 40, and still shake my head in wonder sometimes about just how much is possible at such small scale and cost.

But this is now turning into "when I were a lad..." :)

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#245
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling this embedded system feels like insult to the spirit of 'running light without overbyte', because it's so comically capable. My first PC had 66/33 MHz 80486 processor and 8 MB ram, 320 MB HDD. You could run AutoCAD, play Doom, Civilization, have dual boot for Linux, Windows 3.11 etc. It could compile Linux from source.

You were living large! My first Linux computer was a 20Mhz 80386SX with a 40MB hard drive partitioned half for Windows 3.0 and half for Linux (SLS) and swap. It had a whopping 4MB of RAM and I also compiled my own kernel making sure to trim down features as much as possible. It was magic seeing X11 come up for the first time just like the big-bucks Sun boxes!

Not to brag but I got a 4.77MHz 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday :) It had a whopping 256KB of RAM, a monochrome display (later upgraded to a 4 color CGA that blew my mind), and two (yes, TWO) Floppy drives.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were living large! My first Linux computer was a 20Mhz 80386SX with a 40MB hard drive partitioned half for Windows 3.0 and half for Linux (SLS) and swap. It had a whopping 4MB of RAM and I also compiled my own kernel making sure to trim down features as much as possible. It was magic seeing X11 come up for the first time just like the big-bucks Sun boxes!

Not to brag but I got a 4.77MHz 8086 XT PC for my 8th birthday :) It had a whopping 256KB of RAM, a monochrome display (later upgraded to a 4 color CGA that blew my mind), and two (yes, TWO) Floppy drives.

And a decade before, the distributor DigiKey presented as a one-column advertisement in Popular Electronics, selling 7400 DIP ICs for $0.29 . Inflation-adjusted, that $0.29 now buys a an IC that can run Linux.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#249

I wonder what world would we be living in if people like this fellow were actually focusing on automation and not on making business cards that run Linux. Maybe we wouldn't be living in such a lowly automated reality, using concepts from the previous centuries. Robotics might even make sense...

I have worked on some industrial automation stuff. In my experience, it's genuinely really hard to do in a way that's actually better than manual systems, or very narrowly-scoped and simple automation. The number of edge cases and failure modes is mind-boggling. I'm skeptical that there's much room for effective solutions between extremely simple and dumb automation, and near-human level AI.

Re: My Business Card Runs Linux

#250
post #196

Very cool project! It would be neat to incorporate WiFi into the next version instead of USB. Then you could publish a mobile app to communicate with it. It would be fun to play with at parties. https://www.gridconnect.com/products/esp8266ex-tiny-wireless... .

There's the Lichee Nano. Same chip, available with a WiFi module that plugs into the SD card slot. $8 total. https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Lichee-Nano-Linux-Develop...

$8 vs $3 is hardly justifiable
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