RE: Symbian Vs NET, Learning Audio DSP (Was: common Jobs for VI Programmers)
- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 08:19:16 -0700
I am not the worlds largest Microsoft fan either. So I would not knock your
choice of the Simbian OS but in the long run I think they are going to lose.
I only say this because the mobile devices are catching the desktop
environments in processor power. You might ask what that has to do with one
being better. As we all have learned its not what is better but its what
has the most support in the developer community. As you have seen with the
IPhone Apple ported a shrunk down version of the Mac Lepard and Microsoft is
using a shrunk version of Windows. They are not doing this for no reason.
IN the long run the bridge between the operating systems will shrink to the
point that they will c. In the IPhones case that might be sooner than later
because while they gutted Lepard it is still leopard. In Windows Mobile
case I think they are only two or three releases before a person can code
something in .net and move it from one device to another with out worry.
Hell for that matter you can do it now as long as you don't call an
unmanaged dll. The problem is some things require you to call unmanaged
dll's to get them to work right now. So for example I code some simple game
and change just a bit of the GUI and walla I can run it on everything from
XP to Vista to Windows mobile 5 and 6. that is a large chunk of computer
users. Where as if I code it for Simbian it is not a simple port I know
because I have played with that OS quite a bit when I was looking for a sell
phone. Simple ports is what makes businesses decide environments not which
one chomps bits the best any more. All though I will say Microsoft did a
smart thing with their Win CE platform it is a very good sub set of Win32
it got rid of all the 16 bit garbage so the backward compatibility is not
there and it is a very good multi threaded OS for mobile systems. So if
your coding in Win32 the compatibility between XP, Vista, and the mobile
platform is so close together its amazing. I just wrote a program the other
day and it compiled on all three with no problem well not no problem the
mobile Application did need a bit more key processing code but it was a
simple thing to add the Win Proc function to fix it. So I guess what I am
saying is I think Simbian is going to have a problem when we are running
Quad core processors and 8GB of ram on a cell phone because Microsoft will
just give us Vista or what ever they are calling it at the time to carry
around and that will be the death of Simbian. It will once again be Apple
and Microsoft for all. I don't say this with out some guide posts to this
happening Palm OS was the first to fall to the Windows mobile crowd because
of the familiar .net environment. Oh well like I said we will see.
Now as for math. I think Trig is a necessity because of the way you deal
with sign waves. All though calculus is important as well but the thing is
I am not sure you actually need to know how to do either. For example you
might be better in researching sound processing to start all though to truly
become good you are going to need to understand the low level math better.
For example when I was in the Air force I was really good with electronics
after the military sent me through 6 months of Tech school. It was a full
days courses and the Equivalent to an associates degree in electronics. The
thing is though they only gave us the cream on the milk pot. When I retired
from the military and took physics then trig and calculus in College a lot
of the stuff I knew as just formulas I learned to derive my self and it
brought a larger understanding to how it all worked. Which has now allowed
me to understand how to do what I was doing better. I know however that a
lot of people that are good with sound have never stepped a foot in college
but then neither has a lot of fortune 700 people but some of us just don't
work that way. It really depends on your drive and ability to learn on your
own. College is not a must some people can find the information they need
and use it what College can do for you is give you all the right sign posts
to find where your going though.
If I were you I would first try to do some of the things you want to do and
if things get to in-depth for you that is when you start hunting education.
It doesn't have to be education in the college since I mean if you get a job
in the field you might find you learn more on the job than you can in a
class room.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Veli-Pekka
Tätilä
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 3:23 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Symbian Vs NET, Learning Audio DSP (Was: common Jobs for VI
Programmers)
Hi Ken,
As far as mobile goes I'd be far more willing to develop for devices running
SymbianOS as opposed to the MIcrosoft camp. I'm not against MIcrosoft but
here in FInland most people, me included, have a non-Windows mobile phone
and anything that runs Symbian can run those apps. I already have a screen
reader for the phone, too, which is Talks, since it was out there before
SmartHAL.
Another point is that Symbian has been designed from the ground up to be
extremely memory conscious allowing you to manage memory with certainty in
C+ and it is efficient as well, since the native language is C++. The OS
itself is an elegant microkernel, server based design, compared to Windows,
fully object oriented from the ground up and these ddays it is actually a
hard realtime OS, even,since the phone runs with the same CPU. OK I'm
hyping, practically the quality of the NET tools, libs and level of
convenience is much higher, but my point is that Symbian is a mobile OS from
the ground up, while WIndows CE is just WIndows in a mobile environment.
There's a big architectural difference, or at least used to be. Symbian
feels more like embedded programming as well, though I realize this alone is
a silly argument, <grin>.
About DSP, if I'm interested in just knowing what's out there, designing
nice sounding analog filters and oscs rather than getting a broad and
comprehensive education in math, is there a minimum subset of math for me to
really get started in audio DSP work like designing basic subtractive
synths? I'd probably be able to learn at least some of this stuff on-line
but would need exercises as well, and a firm grip on real applications to
keep me motivated. Wikipedia is pretty bad in terms of math, in that, many
things there are introduced very compactly and abstractly. Plus their alt
tags for the formulae aren't awfuly nice to read with speech or Braille.
Most naive oscillators you do with lookup tables or by computing stuff on
the fly suffer from aliasing, for instance, and I still don't understand say
how resonant low-pass filters work, though know quite well how to use them
in real synths and how steepness is specified.
You're right some things can easily be delegated to libs, even in the
music-dSP list in which I lurked for a while, people said you can use FFT
all right without actually understanding how it works. I understand the
basic idea at some level and even know the formulae for building the basic
waveforms, mostly due to Sound on Sound's synth secrets and the Reaktor
manual. Come to think of it, knowing how to use something is what coders use
every they, if I use a B-tree it is enough for me to know how it looks like
to the coder and what its efficiency is,I don't need to know how it is
implemented.
The highest math I know is hmm:
logarithms, basic derivatives, addition of vectors and other very basic
stuff like that. I took short courses in math in highschool, which went
well, so I never got into complex numbers, vectors apart from addition or
anything higher than that. I feel like there's a big leap in the way of
thinking in any higher math, once it becomes applying some axioms or reading
abstract definitions that would make sense to me much faster informally
expressed. The thing I love in coding is that it is logical, intuitive
reasoning using common sense, and rather straight forward to reason about
with a high degree of practicality. To me it is very different count of
reasoning than pure math is, and I think I'm much better in coding than I
would be in math. So I'm still not sure if I'm up to the DSP work, although
it is the kind of coding I think I would ultimately like to do, if I could.
--
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/
Ken Perry wrote:
> You can definitely do embedded programming on your own. You just need
> to buy your self a mobile device I suggest something with windows
> mobile 2003 or 5 or 6. I know most people are using .net but I have
> recently found out that its much easier to deal with these devices
> with Win32 because while .Net is awesome on the desktop it is missing
> so much on the small platforms it is not worth it. Even with windows
> mobile 6 it is easier to do things at the Win32 level
> rather than the .net cf. Anyway you don't even need to fork over
> the cash for mobile speak or Hal because you can create your own
> simple screen reader or talking application and work out from there.
> Now if you do spend the money on Mobile speak or Hal all the better
> then you have a starter device to play with that is fully accessible.
>
>
> As to math. I agree and disagree with the fact that you need good
> math skills. I guess that would depend on what you call good math
> skills. I studied up to calculus but as some of my other friends have
> recently found out Math fades with time I took my calculus classes in
> 98 and I have trouble with first derivatives while I understand what
> all the integrals are used for and how to derive many of the formulas
> using math I don't remember how to do them all.
> Further more all though I had forgotten how to do Fourier transforms I
> still helped write a program to take readings from multiple
> environment sensors and used a library that did Fourier transform on
> the data to get a smooth view of the data. So even though I had
> forgotten how to do the math I still knew what the math could be used
> for and how to use the function. The libraries for most of the math
> you will use are already written. The new math still being developed
> is something for researchers not serious coders. So I personally
> think its more important to know what is possible to do with which
> formulas rather than to actually know how to do it.
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