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Take a trip through the life's work of one engineer who was involved in embedded systems from Day 1 (courtesy of Rambling Jack).
At this moment, you're looking at the last print issue of Embedded Systems Design magazine. The occasion is especially poignant for me, because so much-20+ years-of my career has been tangled up with the magazine in general, and the Programmer's Toolbox column in particular.
Some folks have been blessed (or cursed) by careers that are "linear." They start one job, stay with it, move up the ladder, and retire happy. Mine hasn't been that way. It's taken some sometimes-unexpected twists and turns-some more pleasant than others. Not all of those directions have had anything whatever to do with embedded systems. I thought, however, that you might enjoy hearing about the ones that did. But first, I need to set the stage with a little background.
giant brains
I've been involved with computers for a long time. How long? Here's a hint: The textbook for my first computer science class, in 1956, was entitled Giant Brains, or Machines That Think. Back then, the notion of "micro brains" wasn't even a blip on anyone's radar. Computers were-and, we assumed, always would be-monster, power-hungry machines that filled large rooms with glass walls, raised floors, and over-engineered cooling systems.
The computer room of 1960 felt more like a cathedral than a place of science, and it had its share of mysterious icons, rituals, a small army of acolytes, and a hierarchy of priesthood, from floor supervisors to managers to that highest of all high priests, the systems administrator.
This was my world for the next decade or so. Not that I actually got to enter the computer room, of course. That privilege was reserved for the anointed. We mere engineers and scientists were not welcome. Heck, it was two years before I even saw the computer, and that was from the outside of those glass walls, looking in. My only contacts with it were the "keypunch girls" who punched my card decks, and the clerk behind the counter who accepted my jobs and returned their results. If, on rare occasions, I interacted with the priesthood, it was in hushed and reverent tones, and a proper...
