That’s why it’s called hardware

I spent some time today working with a colleague on a programming project that involved hardware. Which is a lot more frustrating than a purely software project.

With software you know what you are getting. Either you have a bug in your code or you don’t.

But with hardware there are so many things that are out of your control. Is this cable working? Do I have a faulty board? Is the download rate too fast for the embedded CPU chip?

It can take forever to figure out why something isn’t working properly. Fortunately, by trial and error we managed to solve a ten minute problem in just a little under two hours.

Which isn’t so bad, all things considered. As Robert Towne might have said: Forget about it Jake, it’s a hardware problem.