RE: common Jobs for VI Programmers: GUIs, DSP, DB, Asm
- From: "Ken Perry" <whistler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:59:42 -0700
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.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Veli-Pekka
Tätilä
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 1:16 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: common Jobs for VI Programmers: GUIs, DSP, DB, Asm
Hi list,
A bit of a collective reply for everyone. A huge amount of great input in a
very short time, thanks a lot. There have already been several interesting
points:
Yes, one can create Guis and you are right, the visual fine tuning can
easily be left to someone sighted, I'm not at all embarassed to ask for help
in such a situation. I feel quite confident designing interfaces as long as
they are made up of relatively standard controls. But as soon as we're
talking about, what works well with the mouse, putting in much more graphics
and direct manipulation, and relying on metaphores things get harder. I've
been using the Mac a bit and there are quite a number of clever mouse usage,
sightee, and graphical innovations I would never have been able to figure
out on my own, mostly because I virtually never use the real mouse if
another interface does exist.
database programming got a big mention and rightly so. I'm not very good at
math but at least the basics of database optimization appear to be a lot of
knowing the basicsa of how to compute latencies for indexed databases and
the particulars of the database vender in use, which comes with experience.
Good that the main frame stuff also got mentioned. Assembler or some sort of
embedded system's programming in C is somewhat fascinating as well. I seem
to enjoy the higher level languages like Perl and Ruby for the most part,
but for a long long time, have had a yet unsatisfied nack of really finding
out and most importantly taking the time to learn assembler. But I would
like to learn that in a modern post Pentium and WIndows world, not DOs or
LInux, since I don't really have time to configure a Linux system right now.
Are there any ways you can practice system's or embedded programming on your
own? n phones might be a bit of a stepping stone, there's X86 assembler and
of course the heavy duty stuff like WIndows driver development, maybe some
day.
One of the primary motivators for me to try to learn math has actually been
audio DSP. I'm a synth nut, from the user point of view, though have always
tried to understand as much as possible about the effects and components of
a synth be it analog, FM or sample playback. I also know the basics of VST
and MIDI on wire. The biggest hurdle for me in audio DSP seems to be the
math, in contrast dealing with MIDI is straight forward, intuitive and
doesn't really require any higher math. I have not tried any DSP specifics,
but it just seems to me, based on logic and formal computation courses, that
I canot easily get my head around the truely abstract math that starts out
totally formally from axioms and moves from the abstract to the concrete,
rather than vice versa. I've heard from various sources you need good
discrete math skills, FOurier transforms, matrices, Complex numbers and a
variety of other things, too.
a sighted Linux friend of mine is much more math oriented. He is right now
on a Uni course which does image processing formally based on matrices and
convolution, and told me that most of that stuff is fairly mathematical but
applies directly to audio as well, not just image processing.
The academic career, accessibility related ressearch, is something I've also
been seriously considering and might try that, too, but I'll ask more about
that stuff in another thread when it is current, after having gratuated
first.
--
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/
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