Re: Hardware musings

["Steven N. Hirsch" <shirsch@adelphia.net>]

Mark McDougall wrote:

> Granted, the Amiga has a HDD and much more RAM than an 880KB floppy...
> 
>> Granted, I recently returned to school (part-time) after a 15 year
>> hiatus, and instead of going for a Comp Sci degree, I decided upon a
>> Comp Engineering degree.
> 
> IMHO, you definitely made the right choice! I did Comp Sci straight out
> of high school, and found myself bored-as-batshit writing insurance
> applications - uggh!! After 4 years I couldn't take it any more and went
> back part-time to study Elec Eng. After 7 years part-time study - how I
> wish I had made that choice first!! You learn the software basics in EE
> anyway and obviously the rest of the course is far and above anything
> they teach you in Comp Sci - and much, much more fun because you get to
> tinker with projects exactly like you describe!

In defense of Comp Sci as a major for hardware tinkerers, there are
opportunities in the field of design automation.  I work for the EDA
group in a large, blue company and can assure you the work strikes a
terrific balance between the abstract and the touchable.  The only thing
better than designing hardware, IMHO, is designing and developing
software to make the hardware designer's life easier.

A software person with good understanding of the hardware domain is
worth their weight in gold.  And, no, not all the jobs have moved to
India (yet).

Steve