Flash disks and FFS layout heuristics

[Martin Fouts]

> I can't believe it, you actually think you know more 
> about embedded design then I do!  What a laugh.
> 
> I don't know a thing about you, and you clearly don't 
> know a thing about me.  Here's a hint:  When you don't
> know you shouldn't assume.

So what part of "you think you know" is *not* an assumption?

> You think these problems are complex?

Yes. I do it. That's what makes them fun.

> Embedded systems these days are nearly complete
> single-chip microcomputers running hacked up but nearly complete
> operating systems containing 95% off-the-shelf software, 
> much of it open source, and much of it provided to the developer on 
> a shiny platter, with a fully operational SDK and HDK and FPGA logic 
> around the core cpu.

It amazes me that you can assert to be so knowledgeable about embedded
systems and then make such a glaringly wrong description of the ones I
work on. Our current shipping product has *no* off-the-shelf software,
beyond a few small libraries for image encoding, out of several million
lines of code.  There's no 'fully operational SDK', beyond a gcc
crosscompiler that we've debugged ourselves. The SOC has no FPGA.

> All in one chip.  These days 'embedded' means you are sporting a
> completely functional linux operating system in a two 
> chip solution

It's not a single chip or even two chips. It doesn't run linux.  Keep
guessing wrong, Matt.

> with virtually no external parts required beyond those 
> needed for the connectors.

There are a lot more parts than connectors in the BOM.  Wrong again.

> And it's all now written in C or C++ or 
> whatever the hell language you want to write it in.

Well, "whatever the hell language" gets you off on a technicality there,
Matt.

> It's crazy easy to do embedded development work these 
> days.  No more difficult then writing software on a full blown PC.

There is a class of such development. Pity it's not the class I'm
working in.

>     I'm sorry, but if that is your idea of complex then its roughly
>     equivalent to my idea of ridiculously easy.

No, Matt, it's not my idea of complex.

I see that you're more in need of your advice about not assuming than I
am.