kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/23/2014 01:18 PM, Jean-Paul Louis wrote:
> Dick,
> After seeing your website, I am amazed that you even had spare time to dedicate to Kicad,


Prolific I suppose, especially a while back.  I was blessed with a knack for software.  So
I won't take credit personally, just acknowledge God's gift.

I had no software training in college, I am a Chemical Engineer.   I started a software
company in 1983 after reading only one book, Kernigan and Richie, a month later.  This was
4 years after college.

The crowning achievement in my career of course is what we've done for the United States
Army Corp. of Engineers, and having been chosen for to retrofit the largest power plant in
the U.S., the Grand Coulee Dam, and 10 additional of the larger power plants in the U.S.
The Grand Coulee damn is the largest power plant in the U.S. of any technology, including
coal, nuclear, gas, whatever.  It's the largest.  And my software runs the whole plant.

  http://softplc.com/solutions/appstories/usace

So how does a guy who had no software in college come into this position?

This is a blessing, and is what can happen when one is *faithful*, dedicated to continuous
learning, willing to go out on your own, and willing to take care of paying customers.
(Accurately, I've been described as difficult to work with around here, but KiCad users
are not paying customers.  Paying customers, those we've been fanatical about supporting.
 We call it legendary technical support.  I have an EE-Tech who has worked for me for 26
years, and there is simply no better support guy anywhere.  We both bought into that
religion in the 1990's.)

Enough of the commercial, some may be sick of it already, sorry.


But this should be an important message for those guys still young in their career, about
the importance of continuous learning.  Since leaving college, I've changed careers about
4 times.  Through Amazon books, and everbody's favorite, "university of google", and free
trade magazines, I've been able to keep learning and expanding .  I did my first PCB board
in 2007, an ARM9 board that was taken from a reference design.  I worked for 3 months
laying the damn thing out in KiCad, started over 3 times.  It wasn't going to happen.  The
whole design was literally "stuck" in KiCad, and that did not include the many months
getting to the point of laying it out.  So that was the genesis of the freerouter round
tripper.  I essentially used my software skills to get me out of a hardware design dead
end.  Thank goodness for push and shove.  (Tom, you da man.)

Did my first FPGA 6 months later, now I've written a complete HDLC controller in verilog.
 We live in a wonderful world of opportunity, and what happens in the University is only a
springboard, do not let it define you in a limiting sense.  Truth be told, I have visited
heads of software departments at a couple of Universities, and they'd be hard pressed to
even get a job here.  Real learning comes from the gut and the heart, and most important
of all:

    not being afraid to re-compile.



> I am familiar with the kind of product you develop as I have been using hundreds of those
> in a previous job where the company was manufacturing electronic for Automotive, so we had
> huge assembly lines (20,000 parts built per day including laser welding of electronic components)
> with PLCs and robots all over the place.
> 
> I wish you the best for your company, and hope that we will stay in touch. If you need 
> Manufacturing (DFM, Lean, etc..) advice, I am your man.

Ok cool.  Too bad you were not aware of our stuff back then, eh?  I am sure your hardware
expertise dwarfs mine.

So I am all for staying in contact.

I will be around for just a few more weeks.  Around the time you see something ending with
*.py being committed.


Dick