This was roughly my experience building in hardware 10y ago. 

Some combination of less generalizable knowledge, culture that’s skews more secretive and very few at scale companies that discover the true magic

When I was at Meta, I asked the hardware team what I should read to learn the details of modern consumer HW development so I could work more effectively with them. The consensus was that there really isn’t good literature; you just have to “be there”. Has anything emerged since?

John Carmack

This was roughly my experience building in hardware 10y ago. 

Some combination of less generalizable knowledge, culture that’s skews more secretive and very few at scale companies that discover the true magic 


https://x.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1878854976623218956?s=46

Technowatermelon. Elder Millenial. Building Farcaster. 

nf.td/varun

my take:

the reality is that hw is simply not as generalizable as software. or perhaps the step changes are less discrete, and more continuous / stochastic because you are dealing with a lot more reality, where as sw is more deterministic (or at least it tries to be) -- i don't think the culture is secretive by default - i think software just tends to skew to very open and sharing

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building roc.camera, writings: july.rocks

Doesn't Arduino and 3D printing solve for this? what am I missing?

software artist | building /outpaint | ex: @coinbase ex: bisontrails | seeker of the flow state | artivilla.com

Arduino is one type of microprocessor there are many

3D printing - there are many kinds of 3D printing, FDM, SLA,SLS, MJF, etc etc and many other ways to make things injection molds, etc etc different types of materials, machines, cnc milling, water jet, etc 

yeah it’s not simple

i think to support the first point about hardware not having a playbook is that because of its diversity, it's hard to generalize. there's a lot of tribal knowledge, and know how changes. i don't think it wants to be secretive - it's because there are a lot of edge cases, and hardware adapts to that. embedded devices / embedded software I feel the same, there are many companies (ST, TI, nrf, NXP, renesas etc) and they all have their HAL, and their apis, and their IDEs that you use to setup their stuff

Also another point could be, hardware cycles take longer to do - and you usually need specialized equipment, it's hard to get up and running, where as in this day and age, all you need is a computer and some internet connection to get started with software stuff. even software for hardware like CAD is outdated, or just costs a ton (looking at you fusion 360) to just even get a license to start on, and they are absolute flaming pile of shit compared to modern day Saas software (hello solidworks)

I mean that's like physical manufacturing of any kind. even something like fashion has many types of materials, costs, machines, differences in craft etc. someone's gotta take the risk of figuring it out and putting it all together. It's not like you click a button and name your household DTC brand is invented out of thin air. why would hardware be different?