Live data from Hacker News

ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

tomshardware.com

61–70 of 136 posts

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in NL for a while, few years, changed few companies, it's a place where processes are more important than actual code quality, where people stay in the same job for 10-15 years and everything below that is seen as a bad thing, people is hired for the culture primarily, having awareness of software principles is really worthless. I ran away as the last company I interviewed with, after solving a coding puzz…

I thought that the dutch would be more ... modern?

It's a pretty large gap between enterprise organizations that have lost the capability to do anything but buy mostly terrible software in the open market and organizations that maintain some amount of ability to make things. If you're at one of the former, expect to be locked into a digital landscape that's decades out of date.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#63
post #29
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that link is to a story with a lot of garbage in it.

Do you have other insight? A counterpoint? Anecdote that supports a different narrative? Anything, at all, that would contribute to the conversation and support your "garbage" comment?

It's not accurate as I said I other comment. Software is tested not just on the machine nowadays. I think you'll find most asml employees hesitant to share more, I'm not sure what I can say either.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#64
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in NL for a while, few years, changed few companies, it's a place where processes are more important than actual code quality, where people stay in the same job for 10-15 years and everything below that is seen as a bad thing, people is hired for the culture primarily, having awareness of software principles is really worthless. I ran away as the last company I interviewed with, after solving a coding puzz…

Good thing that soon all the software would be written by AI then. Slightly kidding, but only slightly because I kind of agree with the idea that people shouldn't be writing software but designing systems. All this big talks about unit testing, management styles etc. and at the end we have this software all around with huge security holes and terrible bugs. Maybe the people partying on Fridays right after pushing unt…

Why shouldn’t the AI also design the systems? ;-)

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbc, based on the comment that looks to be driven almost completely by the fact that they are making a tiny number of incredibly expensive bespoke machines, so they can't just keep extra machines lying around to do unit tests with (both because each machine is expensive, and because the results wouldn't necessarily generalize to other machines). So it sounds like a constraint of the field, not bad choices.

The build taking 8 hours doesn't seem to be consequence of the field they are operating

That sounds right, although I'd want to know a lot more before judging

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#66
post #3

Relevant HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181 Apparently their software development processes are terrible.

I expect that if their costumers had to choose between ASML keeping machines around for software testing or shipping every machine the can build, they would want the hardware.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbc, based on the comment that looks to be driven almost completely by the fact that they are making a tiny number of incredibly expensive bespoke machines, so they can't just keep extra machines lying around to do unit tests with (both because each machine is expensive, and because the results wouldn't necessarily generalize to other machines). So it sounds like a constraint of the field, not bad choices.

Why do you need the actual production machine for unit tests? Why can't you build a SW simulator for them and run unit tests on them? I used to work in automotive and all unit tests didn't require the finished car, just the SW. Nasa doesn't hava another Voyager probe in their lab floating around in zero gravity to run unit tests on before sending the SW patches, they use simulators. For calibration you do need the fi…

You're close. Asml doesn't test on one machine only.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, thank you for link. I was expecting the opposite from this company, but for some reason, after reading this, I'm not surprised at all.

>I was expecting the opposite from this company Why? Because they're hot on the stock market since the pandemic? Nokia's SW was the same kind of shitshow when it was dominant. IIRC a long time ago someone on HN wrote here that compiling Symbian OS at Nokia took 2 whole days and Nokia management saw no problem with that. To me, it's exactly what I expect from a HW company, from personal experience. SW is seen just as…

So, they do everything right? Because, if your product is HW, the SW needed to run it is just another BoM item.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#69

I don't want to brag, but buying ASML stocks was probably the smartest financial decision in my life. Also, AMSL & AMAT aren't competing in some areas. AMAT provides tooling & services that assist ASML.

Same, I sold at the peak. Don't hold on to your winners for too long, the stock price is not entirely a function of the company's financial success. A lot of it is just on whims and cycles.

> Don't hold on to your winners for too long, the stock price is not entirely a function of the company's financial success

In the long term you don’t think the stock price is a function of a company’s success? Surely while a a company does very well financially and the financial outlook is very good, the stock price would be higher than when the fortunes change?

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#70
post #64
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing that soon all the software would be written by AI then. Slightly kidding, but only slightly because I kind of agree with the idea that people shouldn't be writing software but designing systems. All this big talks about unit testing, management styles etc. and at the end we have this software all around with huge security holes and terrible bugs. Maybe the people partying on Fridays right after pushing unt…

Why shouldn’t the AI also design the systems? ;-)

Haha right, but maybe you still want to have some control over it - just to be sure that it fits you first. Calibration and quality control if you will. At some level High enough the thing becomes art because you have the have empathy which is something that machines can only pretend since they are operating differently than humans.

A bit like us designing cat toys: Although we can design some successful ones by observing cats and trying out different things, more often than not we design it to our liking and the cat will enjoy the package more than the toy itself.

Post reply on HN