[TenTec] Being a Contrarian...."

Tue Aug 1 08:30:14 EDT 2006

Regarding "highly technical programming such as an ORION II"; after spending 
twenty years in R&D of Telecom and RF applications, I agree... it takes lots 
of money for  highly competent programmer teams to get working a product 
with minimal bugs out of the lab and into the market. See 
http://www.csm-gh.com/projects.htm for examples of beta tests and 
"controlled introductions" with communications industry R&D teams. Seemingly 
no new software product is without bugs or runs as expected outside the R&D 
lab.

Best regards,
Gary - AB9M
CSM(r) G.L.Huber
9679 Heron Bay Road
Bloomington, Illinois 61704
(309)662-0604
www.csm-gh.com
csm-gh at www.csm-gh.com
gary.huber at us.army.mil
ab9m at arrl.net
former National Webmaster for The Society of the Fifth Division
www.societyofthefifthdivision.com
www.csm-gh.com/75thRepoDepo.htm

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Geoffrey S. Mendelson" <gsm at mendelson.com>
To: "Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment" <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 2:56 AM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Being a Contrarian...."

> On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 12:18:10AM -0400, Toby Pennington wrote:
>
> (I fixed the spelling errors in the original text.)
>
> > Someone mentioned to me that, " Ten Tec has badly mismanaged the
> > software design task, and they have failed to maintain internal revision
> > control and documentation, and the firmware is now a twisted road of
> > undocumented patches and fixes by many hands, some of which are no
> > longer around. "
>
> Software design, programing and project management are all very
> difficult tasks. Most people who write programs have no real idea of how
> to design something so that it works and can be maintained.
>
> Young programmers think that code must "look pretty", use all sorts of
> obscure techniques, etc or drastically over complicate things. A long
> time ago I described someone as "there are 1,920 characters on the
> screen and he feels that he must put something in each one".
>
> Their whole concept is that something they do must show how much better
> they are at programing than you, and if you try to read their code, you
> can't.
>
> I once turned down a job because they wanted someone who wrote "quick
> and dirty code" that ran fast and looked good. I write "slow and stupid"
> code that never crashes and anyone can look at and figure out what it
> does, how it does it and fix it.
>
> Except for the DSP code (which was purchased), the Orion code was
> written by one person. I have not seen it, so I won't comment on it (not
> damning praise, simply I have no information). From what I hear, it was
> well planned and well done.
>
> Like every program longer than one instruction, it has its bugs. That's
> nothing new and is to be expected.
>
> One of the problems with the Orion is that the genius behind the code in
> it left the company. With him gone, the task of maintaining the code and
> fixing bugs was left to lesser programmers, under a great deal of
> pressure.
>
> IMHO it's a management problem. You can build a radio with almost any
> engineer. If they leave, you can get another engineer and they can take
> over. Software is very different. You need to balance both the need for
> control and management of change, keeping records, developing
> documentation, quality assurance, etc with the desire to have one person
> "do it all".
>
> Instead of looking at the Orion as if it were a large software
> development project and hiring a system integrator to determine what
> needed to be done, and hire an expensive team, they hired a programmer
> and bought a library.
>
> They fell for the illusion that one person, or a small group of
> programmers can do it all. They can't. In the real world, a programmer
> can not document his own code and most likely not test it.
>
> I'm a rare person in the business in that I can write code that does not
> "break", test programs and figure out how they work and fix bugs, and
> document them so that a new programmer can take over or a nontechnical
> user can use them. HOWEVER, I also know that I can't document my own
> code, can't find all of the bugs, etc.
>
> I recently wrote a posting to this list on this subject (and if I
> remember correctly, blogged it), look it up if you would like.
>
> IMHO in order to make the Orion shine,TT has make some tough choices and
> spend some serious money. Personally, if I was given the project, I'd
> redesign the OII to use different processors that require more commonly
> available programing skills. I would also have to assemble a team, which
> would cost serious money.
>
> That's the main difference between the Japanese companies and TT. Not
> only do they have a pool of well trained, disciplined, experienced
> talent to draw from, they have the money. For every $10,000 TT has to
> spend they can spend a million. If a person does not perform to their
> satisfaction, or does not "fit in", they can move him to the department
> programing VCRs or talking toasters and move in a star from somewhere
> else.
>
> That's also the difference between TT and the open source software
> defined radio projects. The most popular one, is a very simple radio
> with all of the work being done in software on a personal computer.
>
> Since the programing and management is done by volunteers who look at it
> as a labor of love, not something they have to make money on, they have
> a much larger pool of people working on it and many of them are better
> talented than one can hire where TT is, for the wages they can pay.
>
> My estimate is that the cost of a properly sized software development
> team would be $3m to $5m a year. That would come out to sales of around
> 3,000-5,000 units a year for a $5,000 radio. The first year they would
> have to stop selling Orions at all, or people would be faced with buy an
> OII now, in a year it will replaced with an OIII that is so different,
> that there will be no software changes on the O and OII.
>
> They might be able to upgrade and O and OII to an OIII, but it would
> cost around $2,000. How many people would pay that?
>
> > Perhaps someone could decipher this for me in plain words, but it seems
> > to indicate that TT could use some expert outside programming help.
>
> I hope I just did, but I may have confused it more. :-(
>
> They need more than outside programing help, they need a new mindset, a
> new approach and a lot of money. Faced with a choice of spending all
> that money and time to "start over" and "do it right", or just muddle
> along with what they have, I don't think the can justify the time and
> the money.
>
> After all, we are talking about a $5,000 radio that is used in a hobby.
> We are also not talking about something that is broken or unusable, we
> are talking about something "with problems" that most users find
> perfectly fine.
>
> > The same person I quoted above also said, "The Orion DSP code and
> > control interface is really a pretty routine and light weight project
> > for those that are familiar with this type of thing. There are hundreds
> > of professional programmers that work every day with sound card and
> > other audio DSP apps at the core level, and thousands of programmers
> > that are very familiar with embedded user control hardware boxes that
> > could knock out the necessary code in a few weeks from the ground up."
>
> Sorry, but that is so naive that I have to laugh. While there is nothing
> in the Orion that I would say is "rocket science", it's more like a PVR
> (how big is the software staff at TiVo?*), putting it all together is
> what costs money. Not only does each piece have to work, they have to
> work together. ALL of the time.
>
> * I have no idea of what goes into a TiVo, but NDS, the company that
> makes a competing unit is located here and employes hundreds of people.
> I think their unit is sold by the "Dish" network in the U.S. and Sky's
> SATELLITE service in the U.K.
>
>
> > Another rewrite of the code by some really good professionals?
>
> Sure, send in your money to the "OIII re-development fund", We're only
> $5,000,000 away from making little Timmy's dream a reality.....
>
> (Flash a picture of a sad little boy in a wheel chair with a microphone
> in one hand, a bug in the other, and a pair of much too large headphones
> falling off his head.)
>
> :-)
>
> Geoff.
> -- 
> Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
> IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667  Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 
> 1-215-821-1838
> Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/
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