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Electronics Career Game Changers

dougw
  • When the hand-held electronic calculator became available, it was a game changer in reducing design time. 
  • When the PC hit the streets it was an even bigger game changer, with word processing, spreadsheets and CAD.
  • When the Internet took off, it was an even bigger game changer, with search engines and massive information repositories.
  • The advent of affordable low-cost electronics (pioneered by the TI MSP430 for $4.30) made made it feasible for individuals to participate.
  • The Arduino IDE forced the era of low-cost IDEs.
  • The Raspberry Pi maintained the pressure to make electronics affordable, now carried on by Risk V.
  • Element14 changed the game for me, providing much of the instrumentation in my lab, lots of project material and lots of interaction with interesting technical people.
  • When the price of custom PCBs dropped below $1 it totally changed how I do prototyping.
  • The next big game changer is AI. I'm not sure I want to embrace it, but it is a reality.
  • Beyond this, AI and technology will morph into human augmentation. (the cell phone is just a precursor to the "Internet of People")
  • I am not thrilled with cell phones (they were not a game changer in my career) and I am not thrilled about the prospect of human augmentation, even though one vector is longer lifespans.

What events, products and technologies were game changers for you?

Did video games influence your career?

Did Napster blow you away?

Was the open source movement life changing? GitHub?

  • All those things contributed to a global electronics community and businesses.

  • Maybe not for my career, but for everyday life:

    * GPS maps with directions. I had TomTom early on, for when I was driving to clients’ houses for energy assessments. Then a few cars had some form of map guidance, now it’s mostly Google Maps for me.

    * Digital shared calendar. This made it so much easier to coordinate with my wife and stay on top of what was scheduled.

    I bet there’s a few more I’m not even aware of anymore Laughing 

    ps, yes also to all of the above that Doug mentions!

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    I want to also add smart-home automations, but I think they are less game-changer, and more just a convenience.

  • Even before the PC became a thing, there were other small home based computer systems.  For me it was the VIC20.  This was an inspiring piece of gear.  There was a tight little group of engineers at my company of the time that banded together and shared ideas and thoughts about what one could do with it.  We wrote assemblers, compilers and mass storage software and built memory expansions for it.  We had a lot of fun, and it help me to expand my circle of friends.

    Not the PC launch was anything to ignore.  At the same company, I was one of the first engineers to get a company branded clone of the PC as office equipment.  At the time we were working on flight systems and dealing with Boeing.  We would use Boeing data to build models of the aircraft for our flight equipment project.  We had teams that would take the data (1, 2 and 3 dimensional tables) and convert the data into polynomials to use in our equipment.  I was tasked with writing program that could dial in to Boeing and down load the data and then automate the data processing.  I was able to turn the multi-person, multiple week conversion into a day or less.

    Later, I worked a test equipment company that worked on the first use of a PC to drive an automated board tester (instead of a much more expensive workstation computer).  This was a real exciting project for me, and one that provided a lot of visibility in the company and led to me managing a 10-person team and multiple product lines.

    Again, Later in my career, it was the PIC controllers (although I also used some MSP470s) that ignited my interest in the field of embedded programming and hardware design.  Again, very exciting times. This really locked my career path into a solid growth plan that lasted me many years of gainful employment.  Even in retirement, embedded systems and software development has been my sweet spot in my skill set.

  • For me it was programmable logic CPLDs/FPGAs. During University I was lucky to work with one of the first PCI compliant devices back then. The MAX 7000 series EPM7256S. Needed two of them to implement a full 32 bit 33MHz PCI card. MAXplus2 and the Byteblaster, good times, simple times.

  • in reply to genebren

    I'm working on a VIC20 project right now - stay tuned...

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Are we talking X10 or WiFi or a newer cloud based system (or all of the above)?

  • Libreoffice has been a truly useful resource.

    I was using MS Word when it went nuts and suddenly trashed my document, not for the first time.

    I took the backup file and imported it into Libreoffice write and my document was back without all of the MS Word issues.

    I have not looked back and now use Libreoffice exclusively for my books.

  • Almost everything in EE has become more and more affordable/accessible if not free...

    image

  • in reply to scottiebabe

    I used to use that product a lot when I started to doing more home built projects and for prototyping some of my early consulting jobs.  It really did open up a once very time consuming and costly process.