chapter
3
Understand the System
“It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this, I have endeavoured in my case to do.”
—SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS
War Story. When I was just out of college and trying to get experience (among other things), I took on a moonlighting job building a microprocessor-based valve controller. The device was designed to control the amount of metal powder going into a mold, and it took measurements from a scale that weighed the powder (see Figure 3-1). As many engineers do (especially still-wet-behind-the-ears engineers), I copied the basic design (from a frat brother who had used the same processor chip in his thesis project). ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access