Hardware Article

A common factor of both software and hardware design is that mistakes happen. This is the inevitable consequence of human beings’ involvement.

Commonly, when problems occur, there is talk about “bugs. .This term is unfortunate, as it suggests that the fault is somehow external to the development process—it sounds as if a bug crept in during the night under the cover of darkness. It would be much better to call them “errors”, because that is what they are. If a developer thinks in those terms, they can own the errors and, hopefully, be wary of making such mistakes in future.

The development process for hardware and software seems somewhat similar: a requirements specification is issued; a design is crafted; the result is coded using a specialized language (HDL for hardware and programming language for software – amazingly similar).