[avrdude-dev] Re: How good is AVRDude ?

[Bernhard Walle]

Hello,

* Janaka Subhawickrama [23.03.2005 03:30]:
> 
> My Background :
> I am an Embedded Software Engineer with 8 Years embedded experience
> in a verity of chips, living in Australia.
> 
> Background to the question:
> I was having a discussion with a Embedded Software Engineer with
> about 40 Years experience (Yeh that's right, has been with it since
> the valve days) when he said the following. "AVRDude [and open source
> embedded tools] is only good for enthusiastic amateurs.
> Professionals don't use it for work!".

Well, see at http://www.beecon.de/. MicroBlue is a professional
Bluetooth library for AVR, built on top of GNU tools (and uisp, but I
think that does not matter in this discussion). It's not available for
free, so I think it's "professional".

Another example is a programmable robot available at Conrad (Germany),
developed by the DLR (German Aerospace Center). They used the GNU
Library including avrdude and developed a own software on top of this
tools to make this robot programmable by the user.

Read the manual at (if it works)
http://www.produktinfo.conrad.com/datenblaetter/175000-199999/191164-an-01-en-Asuro_BS_Programmierbarer_Roboter.pdf.

> His reasons are as follows
> - There is no formal testing done on AVRDude
> - No professionals use it for work purposes
> - Professional developers don't develop it
> - There is no software architects overseeing the architecture of AVRDude
> - There is ad-hoc planning

How does this person define "professional"? Is a professional somebody
who has knowledge and experience or is he someone who gets maximum of
money ...


Regards,
Bernhard

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