| ??? 09/11/07 20:16 Read: times Msg Score: +1 +1 Good Answer/Helpful |
#144397 - but it's a 51 on steroids!... and some philosophy Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Well, I wouldn't call a 75MHz 4-clocker with 16MB address space for both code and data, with a fat (and this is not acronym for "file allocation table") set of tools and utilities built-in in ROM, a microcontroller (although on the other hand, I doubt the term macrocontroller would gain significant popularity... :-) ) The OP might be confused by calling this an 8051. It relates to the 8051 similarly as the governor of California relates to me.
But this is not the point. The point is the misconception of the "power tools". We see it here often - I am IN NEED of floating point operations. Why? Because I need to calculate sin or log. (Let's just not question whether sin or log is REALLY needed for now - although the reader already knows that often even this is not needed to fulfill the given task). The novice is told in the school one single power tool - floating point arithmetics. Sure, even a two-byte addition can be performed using FP, so it IS universal; but the reader here is certainly aware of the immense cost of this universality. Similarly, I often see, I need to implement TCP/IP, so I NEED multitasking. Of course this is not true. For a web-(http-)thermometer, or an ethernet-watchdog, single task implementation of the stack (or, not even a stack-approach) is appropriate. For a complex application, which has to serve multiple connections at the same time, or has to support e.g. file transfer (e.g. log files download) while an time-intensive application is running, a well-though-off multitasking (a.k.a.RT) OS is fully appropriate. But, don't get me wrong, I am not THAT stupid. If the question is only to reach out and use a power tool, maybe in the name of "programmer's time efficiency", perhaps also with being aware of its cost (in each meaning), let it be. Also, those users are often aware of the alternative ("real") solutions so they can resort to them if they find the cost etc. constraining. But then, those users won't come here asking, will they. No, the question is usually, "I need floating point/multitasking, but I don't know how to do it". Then, I think, it is time to tell to these users, that there is world beyond the power tools... Sorry for the lengthy and slightly OT post. JW |
