[digg=http://digg.com/hardware/Teaching_an_introduction_to_embedded_systems_course] So it seems that getting shot in the face by a robot can actually pay long-term dividends.
By which I mean that after all the time I spent building and debugging hardware in the now-defunct Computer Vision and Robotics Research Group, I’m now one of the decreasing handful of people in the CS department who knows hardware. Which sounds odd from the outside I suppose – most non-computer people I know seem to think that anyone with a degree in computer science or computer engineering knows how to do anything and everything to do with computers. It doesn’t actually work that way, the same way that a neurosurgeon wouldn’t be able to deal with a pandemic; the field is specialised in both cases to the point where specialists aren’t interchangeable anymore, at least at the deeper levels of specialisation.
That’s not to say that there’s no knowledge of hardware outside of the few people who’re working on hardware-level research; it’s more that those working in (for… Read the rest
