[tech] Re: several messages

Andrew Williams andrew at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
Fri Jun 15 13:24:23 WST 2001


On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 13:01:06 +0800 (WST), Mark Tearle wrote:

>> If you're planning a project that will be useful for other vending
>> machines, it's a better idea to make the hardware too - documenting how
>> you've burned a ROM for this particular microcontroller and
>> implementation won't be very useful.
>
>Depends which way you look at it and where you draw the lines between
>the bits - a vending machine could be simply modelled as:
>
>	slot, thing, price, empty?

It all depends where you draw the line and how much you want to specify
- you could model a vendimg machine as:

-1) Advertise availability of product
-2) Transfer abstract commodity from purchaser to current owner
-3) Transfer product from current owner to purchaser

I don't think it's worth spending a huge amount of time documenting and
specifying how to do (1) and (2) unless the people you're aiming the
documentation at are capable of doing (3) without further docs, because
after steps (1) and (2), the customers would be left rather pissed
off...

Andrew





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