Bruce in alaska wrote:

Ahhh, but there is a GIANT difference between what RayMarine firmware is
designed to do, and what your Multi-Million Dollar Investment Software,
or your Healthcare software is designed to do.

Bruce, I'm not trying to get into any kind of a ****ing contest or
anything, and I certainly accept your point. When you are creating a
product, there are a lot of things you have to balance (not the least of
which is the sales end of the organization's desire to get it out the
door yesterday). Also, features sell the thing, while great diagnostics
will only enhance your reputation among a relative small group of
technicians, resulting in few, if any, additional sales. Often times
though, those same diagnostics save money in the long run. It's just
hard to sell that to the company exec's.

As to the code space requirements, I just don't buy that. Sure, there
was a time when I counted clock cycles and bytes (back in the early '80s
when I was building machines with embedded processors), but those days
are long gone. At the scale we are speaking, memory size and processor
cycles are basically available for the taking.

All that being said, I agree with you that it is bad form for someone
who has a problem with an installation he did himself to seek bargaining
power with the company by posting videos, etc. without ever bringing an
expert in to go over the installation.

RayMarine is a "Consumer"
level Firmware system, and needs to fit in caparativly Small Codespace,
when balanced against the Stuff you guys are writing. Why would ANYONE,
with any sense of software smarts, expect to get anything more from
RayMarine, than they get from their Whirlpool Washing Machine, or their
Kitchen Stove? These are Consumer Products, of limited Production runs,
and your expectations are for Mission Critical Software.... Does anyone
else figure these guys are just whiner's......



--
Dan Best
s/v Tricia Jean, Tayana 37 #192
http://home.comcast.net/~triciajean192/