It's interesting to try to fit what is often talked about as "future-proofing" and "reusability" into the development of a general-purpose CPU, since CPUs are in a sense the ultimate reusable system.
In an overly simplified textbook example of designing/building a CPU, you have an ISA you're building the CPU to support. The ISA defines a finite set of operations and their inputs, outputs, and side effects (like storing a value in a particular register). Then you build the CPU to fulfill those criteria.
In my experience, designers that want reusability usually don't have enough precision in how they want to reuse a system so an ISA-like design can't be created.
And practically, it's the rare (I might even say non-existent) day-to-day business problem that needs CPU-like flexibility. Usually a system just needs to support a handful of use cases, like integrating with different payment providers. An interface will suffice.
Usually a system just needs to support a handful of use cases, like integrating with different payment providers.
Building EV chargers is a good dose of electrical engineering combined with talking to dozens of car models and their own particular quirky interpretations of common protocols, which is like designing websites for a market with dozens of unique browser implementations.
In spite of that, it seems half of the complexity is making sure people pay.
Comments
It's interesting to try to fit what is often talked about as "future-proofing" and "reusability" into the development of a general-purpose CPU, since CPUs are in a sense the ultimate reusable system.
In an overly simplified textbook example of designing/building a CPU, you have an ISA you're building the CPU to support. The ISA defines a finite set of operations and their inputs, outputs, and side effects (like storing a value in a particular register). Then you build the CPU to fulfill those criteria.
In my experience, designers that want reusability usually don't have enough precision in how they want to reuse a system so an ISA-like design can't be created.
And practically, it's the rare (I might even say non-existent) day-to-day business problem that needs CPU-like flexibility. Usually a system just needs to support a handful of use cases, like integrating with different payment providers. An interface will suffice.
Building EV chargers is a good dose of electrical engineering combined with talking to dozens of car models and their own particular quirky interpretations of common protocols, which is like designing websites for a market with dozens of unique browser implementations.
In spite of that, it seems half of the complexity is making sure people pay.