[GreenKeys] AMTOR/SITOR/NAVTXT Protocol

[Chris Elmquist]

On Monday (12/08/2014 at 10:30AM -0500), Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote:
> On 8 December 2014 at 10:09, Chris Elmquist <chrise at pobox.com> wrote:
> > <Guys, hold my beer and watch this>
> >
> > Because the OP may be familiar with and productive in C?
> >
> I'm not trying to convince the OP to change their language choice. I
> was just wondering the reasons why. (I'd guess, like you mentioned
> later, possibly the decoder is going to be running on "limited"
> hardware like a microcontroller or DSP.)

OK.  Perhaps I am a little sensitive to "language wars".  I've been in
a lot of places where people like to mandate tools.  It's kinda like
bringing in a bunch of carpenters to build your house but on the day
they get there, you tell them they can only use rubber hammers that you
picked out.

> > Because C has been used to develop billions of lines of system
> > and protocol software for almost 45 yrs?
> >
> Systems programming... some I want to learn more of but am afraid of
> touching lest I break something...

Well, it is just software.  You can't break much unless you are working on
say, power/cooling controls and you have a bug that doesn't cut the power
on a fault like it should and burns up $20 MIL worth of computer hardware.
Not that I know much about that kind of thing...

> > Because there aren't any decent ALGOL compilers anymore?
> >
> At least it's not APL. :P

or .NET

> > Why NOT write it in C?
> >
> Why not use C? Hmm... well there's an inadequate amount of blackjack
> and hookers as compared with C++; also there's a stunning lack of the
> ability to shoot yourself in the foot so badly you implode the
> universe.

The Linux kernel, which is what is underneath Android is now at 15
million lines of C.  Android runs on 1 billion devices worldwide...
so, something must be going OK there.

> In all seriousness, I see no reason not to write it in C. Only other
> thing I could see writing it in would be Ada; but who even uses Ada (I
> know why one would use Ada, I also know that it isn't "shiny" enough
> for most people)?

As was mentioned elsewhere, we could write it in assembly or FORTRAN--
all the WSJT related codes that the guys are using for weak signal work on
HF and EME have all the signal processing algorithms written in FORTRAN.
Joe Taylor likes to code the math in a langauge intended for that.

IMO, pick the language you are most productive with and especially for
hobby projects, pick the one you enjoy, just as long as it's not .NET ;-)

Chris N0JCF
-- 
Chris Elmquist