As the author of the blog post, it’s disappointing to hear that you didn’t enjoy it. My article was never about claiming to be a hardware expert, but rather about sharing my personal experience as a newcomer for those interested.
What I find concerning is the unwelcoming attitude towards newcomers like myself, prevalent in some hardware and electronics communities. My critique in the article is directed at this exclusionary mindset. It’s important to remember that every expert started as a beginner, and a dismissive approach does not benefit the community. We all have unique contributions to make, and diminishing the experiences of newcomers isn’t constructive. Let’s focus on fostering a community where learning and growth are encouraged for everyone.
I think several of the slightly negative responses are because the article is about "creating a side project for a specific user segment...in a tiny market," plus discussion of business considerations, and the headline suggests something much broader.
The HN audience has folks from all aspects of hardware design, from architecture, to RTL coding, to physical design, or hobbyists programming FPGAs, etc., Saying "hardware was an entirely new world for me. I found it to be an unforgiving, harsh, complex terrain," just sounds wrong to them, like you're drawing conclusions about a huge field based on a narrow hobby project.
You seem to have set out to write an opinionated piece with a particular point of view, and said in your intro that you were going to be controversial, so you must have expected not everyone would agree with everything you said.
That’s literally one of your headings. You can’t hide behind the arrogance of the EE community when you say stuff like that, especially if you’re just ordering a four layer board from JLPCB. No offense but you didn’t manufacture anything - you did the equivalent of spinning up an EC2 instance via the web interface, installed nginx on it, and blogged about it as if you were a cloud architect. That tone permeates the post, despite the titular admission.
I would approach any professional community with much more humility. Especially when you’re still learning stuff like ”When assembling parts, you may face delays if some are unavailable.”
As an EE/firmware engineer working in the field, don't listen to the naysayers. Just because it's not some 10 layer RF board doesn't mean it's not a rewarding project and a worthwhile product. For the record, the products we design and assemble in-house are only 4 layer boards, and our business is doing just fine.There's too much elitism in engineering. I think the article is awesome; you found out a lot of pain points that I deal with regularly. The only nitpick I have is that I wish more people were on the side of open source hardware than patents.
> I think the article is awesome; you found out a lot of pain points that I deal with regularly.
Imho the most valueable part of the article is between the lines: showing how many aspects are in play, how long the route from first experiments to shippable product can be.
The devil is in the details. And those details can differ a lot depending on project, expertise or suppliers. For example one pcb manufacturer may have very different capabilities, pricing structure or quality control than another. Picking suitable components is almost an art in itself. Etc etc.
What I find concerning is the unwelcoming attitude towards newcomers like myself, prevalent in some hardware and electronics communities. My critique in the article is directed at this exclusionary mindset. It’s important to remember that every expert started as a beginner, and a dismissive approach does not benefit the community. We all have unique contributions to make, and diminishing the experiences of newcomers isn’t constructive. Let’s focus on fostering a community where learning and growth are encouraged for everyone.