Discuss the difference between hardware and software prototyping.
Answers
Explanation:
Computer hardware is any physical device used in your machine........ whereas software is a collection of code installed onto your computer's hard drive.
Explanation:
In our adventures at the Hack Reactor, we spent two days this week, or rather about 14–18 hours building and deploying a minimum viable product, or a prototype, on our own. What you can finish in this time is completely staggering to me. Coming from a hardware background and having been involved in the development of a couple projects from concept to reality, all I can say about the development cycles differences between hardware and software is that these are completely different leagues.
To make some cursory comparisons, a project I worked on a few years back had us develop and build a motorcycle with an electric/hybrid drive system. To get to “minimum viable product” level, or in plain terms, something that could be presented to some interested party, and taking out of the equation any third-party delays, idea to prototype was something that took several months. And if there are changes after that? Well, you can add weeks as things need to be redesigned/tested/integrated, which leads to another component having to go through that cycle, and so forth.
But what can be done in around two days in software is for instance a note-taking app that transcribes your speech to text, is voice control enabled, and stores your notes in a database in the cloud. All this with authentication and encryption for your information. It is literally a finished product that would only need tweaking, a nice coat of paint, and scalable deployment through AWS, Azure or the likes. Other things were a video chat client! Along with a cloud-server for the service! Or a simple yet familiar implementation of instagram!
In some cases the speed of this comes from the ease of setting up a full-stack app. For instance the MEAN stack, which covers everything from back-end with a server (Node), and interface for said server (Express), a database (MongoDB), and a front-end framework (Angular) to make all the interactions work, and look good while doing it!
For comparison, when developing the previously mentioned prototype motorcycle, we spent well over a month getting the drive system together and working, and that was followed by a lot of testing, where at several stages we decided to scrap parts of the system and replace them with new ideas. This resulted in basically an system that stored electricity, could keep it’s energy pack charged using gasoline, and driving a small shaft. What do you do with that? Doesn’t make for a very exciting presentation. And then issues of size come into play. Can we make it smaller? It has to be lighter! Ok, let’s scrap this part and find a new solution… Rinse, and repeat. This was then followed with developing a frame, that could hold the drive system, which was followed by jumping through countless legal hoops, as well as regulatory hoops. And as we know the wheels of bureacracy turn slowly. And after a lot of work and time you sit there with a prototype that works, looks good, and is for all intents and purposes “legal.” Then what? You have to build more! So you have to set up production, source a lot of components, have sub contractors setup/retool for your needs, etc.