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allanlane5
Posts: 3,815
I've been observing the "Propeller" development with great interest.· It looks like a brilliant resource.· A couple of things bother me though.
1.· That propeller head icon is awful.· Looks cartoony.· Beany and Cecil haven't been on in a LONG time.· The Propeller is a quite capable chip and a brilliant idea.· It's a shame to imply it's a toy.· An airplane-propellor-seen-from-the-front would be a much more professional icon.
2.· Wouldn't it be much simpler (for the compiler) to use open-close curly-brackets, or BEGIN-END statements, to indicate blocks of code?· One-or-more white-spaces to delineate tokens is fine.· Using whitespace to indicate code blocks to the compiler is kind of awkward.· I believe Python does this (or Ruby?), and I don't like it there either.
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1.· That propeller head icon is awful.· Looks cartoony.· Beany and Cecil haven't been on in a LONG time.· The Propeller is a quite capable chip and a brilliant idea.· It's a shame to imply it's a toy.· An airplane-propellor-seen-from-the-front would be a much more professional icon.
2.· Wouldn't it be much simpler (for the compiler) to use open-close curly-brackets, or BEGIN-END statements, to indicate blocks of code?· One-or-more white-spaces to delineate tokens is fine.· Using whitespace to indicate code blocks to the compiler is kind of awkward.· I believe Python does this (or Ruby?), and I don't like it there either.
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Comments
just kidding
you rock
i so agree with you
I am not kidding.
I agree the icon is a little immature, but I don't think it is that bad. I don't think it implies a toy, more implies the lack of thought on the developer. (please no flames....I said "implies")
Simpler is relative......we(being the consumer not the developer) have no idea of what is really involved with building an interpreter for a chip. (atleast I don't) It is always easier to see hindsight, rather than foresight. Much easier to gripe about what was done wrong, then to plan on what to do·right.
I personally have said," I will deal with it, because I didn't have to develope it." I won't ***** till I develope it myself.
Just my opinion,
James L·
nature of these forums except maybe an open and honest discussion of the topic at hand
1. I feel the Propeller icon denotes approachability and just being something completely different from whats out there.
2. (opinion) I like the use of whitespace as block indicators, it is very much like the way paragraphs are separated on a page and indented to show the first line.
by the way, do you like to be told by the compiler that you forgot some formatter, when everything that does anything is already there and in the proper order?
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Who says you have to have knowledge to use it?
I've killed a fly with my bare mind.
As for the code block delimiter issue, this has been discussed repeatedly in this forum. If you want my personal thoughts on it (before I became a Parallax employee), use http://search.parallax.com to find the thread.
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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
After considering countless names for the chip and many logos, we settled on the Propeller Beanie because, it is not intimidating and not so "serious" ... we are always trying to bring things to the market that are very approachable, usable, practical and fun.· We knew some would dislike the logo, but the effect of it being as different-from-other-logos as the Propeller chip·is different-under-the-hood is very fitting.
Regarding CJ's #2, I like his reasoning... that's something we didn't think of in quite those terms, but it felt so much more natural to make it this way for reasons like that.· I love it.· Personally, I've always disliked having to end lines with a semicolon and having the start and end blocks with { } or begin end.
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--Jeff Martin
· Sr. Software Engineer
· Parallax, Inc.
Post Edited (Jeff Martin) : 9/29/2006 9:16:07 PM GMT
Personally I think the logo reflects the fact that this chip is a labour of love not just the product of a bunch of suits in a meeting, it also looks really cool on the ICs themselves.
We've been through the white space stuff ad nauseam in other threads, press ctrl-i and get on with it.
Graham
When I first saw the Propeller web site and saw the 'propeller-beenie' I too thought it rather 'silly'. But then, after seeing it a number of times, and getting into the Propeller details, consider if it had been an IBM-type company,, where all the 'suits' had a vote on it. Hey, so its a 'geeky' logo, it sure isn't a horribly designed microX8.
Now, I like the logo. Tells me they (Parallax) can have fun, yet develop a serious IC for us to work with.
Just my $0.02....
I'd not be ashamed to have the logo on my T-shirt.
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Harley Shanko
h.a.s. designn
Ask any orthodontist: visible braces {}{}{}{}{} are so last century!
·····
·····20th Century················21st Century
'Same applies to programming. Indentation is the clean, new, invisible brace.
The Propeller's all about productivity and having fun, Allan. Please join us!
-Phil
LOL......That's great.
James
At first the Propeller "beany" logo comes accross as a little "hoakey", and it takes a little doing to convince old-school engineers of the product's viability. Eventhough I agree with the Parallax "let's have fun" philosophy, I think a more conventional approach would have been more appropriate for those in a professional setting. That said, it will not deter me from using the chip... I'm learning to live with the minor embarrassment.
Cheers
Peter (pjv)
As to what CJ said, I'd rather have the compiler tell me I didn't have the code formatted right, then jumping up and down pages of code pulling out my hair only to find out that this line of code was indented 2 spaces instead of 3.
Not sure what to say about the Logo. I think its cool. Never really put too much thought into it. But, as far as it making the Propeller look toyish, I think not. A friend of mine works on embeded systems for a large company that forces him to work on 8051's and 8086's all day. He has seen what the Propeller can do, and what I have done with it over the last few weeks and is totally rocked by it. I have done more with a single chip & three resistors (TV_Object) than he could ever dream of with his chips.
I've written a few thousand lines of Propeller code so far, and the white space used to control code blocks has not cause any major problems, if you have the lines showing. I have grown to like Spin. I sometimes wish VB was a bit more like it.
Lack of a true debuger... now that's another story...
Jim
Regarding the Propeller logo, some people here have understood our intention perfectly. The point of the logo·is to suggest that this is something fun, fresh,·and accessible, and definitely not edgy or intimidating - that it might be useful is a pleasant discovery awaiting the adventurous. The rest of the microcontroller world takes itself very seriously as it produces formulaic and incremental products which are best compared via checklists. Boring! The Propeller is designed to enable projects which are otherwise not possible, or at least not practical.
Despite the lightheartedness·of the logo, the Propeller is seriously made to do things that other microcontrollers couldn't even contemplate. Also, an inordinate amount of effort went into assuring that it is electrically robust. We used an e-beam prober and focused ion beam machine to verify and tweak every critical aspect of its internal operation. Many fine tunings were made to its on-chip memories and clocking circuits. What this means to the customer is that he should see unwaivering, rock-solid·operation from the chip. Also, we will produce these chips for as long as 0.35um CMOS technology is available. If it goes away in 15 years, and there's still demand for this design, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that we'd put together a small fab to build it in.
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Chip Gracey
Parallax, Inc.
Post Edited (Chip Gracey (Parallax)) : 9/30/2006 6:03:03 AM GMT
The logo also reminds of a series of Calvin & Hobbes strips where Calvin orders a Beanie through a Cereal Box offer, but he's frustated because has to wait 6 weeks before he gets it in the mail.
It sounds like another logo, the Apple, that was also said by some to be too frivolous (not!).
I've been at conferences like "Embedded Systems" where the Parallax booth stood out like a fun-house in Kazakhstan. At many of the booths, it is daunting to figure out what on earth the touted product does, or why one should care. At the Parallax display, you see the products doing many things worthy of 5 beanies, readily accessible. I'm wondering what the response will be when they take Propeller to those shows.
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Tracy Allen
www.emesystems.com
Post Edited (Tracy Allen) : 9/30/2006 5:23:02 PM GMT
It shows that Parallax doesn't take themselves too seriously, at least compared to some companies...
And even more importantly, it's as if the gang at Parallax is pointing at the rest of the industry and saying 'Nyah!' and laughing...
After all, the most anyone else can show for themselves is a few bits of silicon art that can only be seen with a good microscope...
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Don't visit my new website...
Sure, it can convey the concept of something new and refreshing, but what conveys the seriousness that went into creating the chip? While some engineer may understand the benefits of the platform, what happens when the stodgy CEO and CFO see the beanie, snort, and then fire the engineer for suggesting it?
Not that anybody would really get fired, but as far as the perception is concerned, I think that a marketing survey with some different logos would produce interesting results.
Graham
Personally, if I was working for a dude like this, and was fired for a reason like this, I'd feel happy and lucky that I no longer worked for someone that superficial and ignorant. Sometimes good fortune comes in back packages!
-Parsko
You may say "where's the spec sheet", the answer is we are working on it.
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Paul Baker
Propeller Applications Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
Sorry to have dredged up old issues and old arguments, but I do appreciate the education. As always, Parallax rocks!
It forces you to properly indent· your program making it readable. You can do <CTRL> I to turn on the indenture lines making it easier to see. Keeping methods small enough to view on one page is a great idea as it keeps the method to 1 easily understood process, again making your code easier to understand.
Ive' been designing hardware for 30 years and this is by far the greatest development since the 8085 (Intel).
Since getting my first Propeller 2 months ago, Ive designed an I/O card system for my employer that uses 5 boards, each with a propeller. The power I have with 40 cogs running at 80MHz is phemoninal.
As far as the beanie logo, I think its an indication that using the Propeller can be fun. I even got a Smiley Propeller shirt from Smiley central. Its a hoot.
Paralllax, Keep up the great work. I saw that the price dropped to $12.95 today, another great step.
P.S. I bet the folks at MicroChip are having·a cow.
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Caught in the PropWash
The instant I saw the Propeller logo I thought it was *fantastic* -- it's clean, has great balance, great colors, has an absolute presence. It has a very precise geometry but is fun and accessible -- like the Propeller itself is meant to be. It also gives a nod to the old-school geek tinkerer, circa TRS-80, which seems to be Chip Gracey's background (from what I've read anyway). It stands out in a noisy media landscape of techno, futuristic, textured and chromed graphics.
You could animate it. It looks good big, small, in black-and-white, in color. You could make actual Propeller hats. Versatility and ease of translation into other media/formats are the marks of a strong identity graphic. Even if you didn't print the words "Propeller" or "Parallax" you would still recognize it from a block away.
In short, props out to the design team. It's way cool.
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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST