Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
I saw a thread on another site where people were speculating about the possibility of Garmin allowing people to write widgets for their hardware using other languages like Python or Java. One person said it will likely be Monkey C for the foreseeable future because it lets them build compilers for the specific architecture their chips use. The guy said his battery died on a hike once, and the activity was still saved because Garmin knows when it can interrupt the process. From what I know as a long time Garmin user, who writes code for a living, there are a lot of optimizations in these devices.
That kind of specificity doesn't port! And these issues can be difficult to code around, which means you don't get much done in a day.
Yep. I'm sure that's why the big feature is a hardware one. What's that Chinese Proverb? "The most important thing is that which is not being said." True here,I think. Where's the new whiz bang double resolution display? What about the brand new snappy trim user interface? What about.... in other words, all the things that weren't being introduced that their competition is pressing them on is the part that "wasn't being said."
At some point, and they're probably near it, their decades of code becomes a prison of sorts. After having been involved in the launch of two new bike computers from different manufacturers, it's clear that building a bike computer is deceptively complicated and difficult. While Garmin understands that better than most, all those lessons learned and incorporated in code by engineers long gone, makes a rewrite of their code a giant nightmare. The competition is starting to close in and if they hit a speed bump while doing this rewrite, it could be the end of their market leadership. Let me put it this way - I'm glad that's not my decision to make as an engineering VP right now.
J.