Posted on 12/21/2023 9:54:02 AM PST by ShadowAce
The Toaster
Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. “What do you think this is?”
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. “It is a toaster,” he said. The king asked, “How would you design an embedded computer for it?” The engineer replied, “Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I’ll show you a working prototype.”
The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, “Toasters don’t just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don’t look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years.”
“With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes.”
“...The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, ‘Cook yourself.’ The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs.”
“Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don’t want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too.”
“We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won’t buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. Users will want to pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook.”
“Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. An Intel 80386 with 8MB of memory, a 30MB hard disk, and a VGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. (Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!).”
The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
It just identifies as a toaster oven.............
Same here. We had a 4 slicer and limited counter space. Since it’s just me and my wife now, we bought a cheap 2 slicer and gave the 4 slicer to Goodwill.
The two slicer quit after about a month. Cheap Chinese crap.
The 4 slicer was decades old and most likely still works wherever it is..............
I actually replaced a vehicle’s faulty electric window mechanisms with crank handles...and lived happily ever after. Do we really want CPUs in every device we use? The more layers of tech equals more ways they will fail over time.
“The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after”
Too bad it wasn’t Bill Gates, and too bad isn’t a true story.
The “Computer Scientist” obviously worked for Microsoft.
I want them to make a new car without all that electronic stuff. I don’t mind cranking windows up; I don’t even need air conditioning much. All that stuff is just waiting to break and run up bills.
They need to make a basic car that would be cheaper for lower income people to buy. But I’ve wondered if it’s even possible with all the regulations there are now
Or required monthly updates before it will engage.
LOL!
I’m in the market for a top notch toaster from the 1950’s or 60’s. I live close to a very wealthy town, and I have no doubt I will find one at one of their local thrift stores, as most of the possessions of those wealthy people, when they have passed on, go to a particular thrift store. I have had several cheap toasters over the years, and not a single one can make a decent piece of toast. I don’t think I would have had much better luck with a more expensive model, since they just don’t make things like they used to. Except for Speed Queen washers: they’re still top notch.
I think the design is optimized for use on a gas stove, which all camp stoves are.
Our house doesn’t have a ton of counter space and we don’t eat toast often. Thus, we’ve never had a toaster. We do have and use almost daily a toaster oven. It’s far more versatile than a simple toaster.
I never have success going to the thrift store with anything specific in mind. But I’ve gotten lots of really nice vintage stuff very cheap, by routinely browsing the stores.
What “expensive” toaster would you recommend...I have read reviews on some expensive toasters...lotta people say “don’t waste your $$.”
We had a toaster oven for awhile when our oven/range died during Covid lockdown; and we were too busy to get it replaced right away.
I didn’t like the toaster oven at all; it just didn’t cook/bake/roast like a regular oven; and there are a lot of prepared frozen things that warn not to heat them in a toaster oven.
But it did make very good toast.
I can only speak to the one I bought -it’s a Black and Decker that cost about $65.00 a few years ago. They have other models now.
Cuisinart may make a good one; but I haven’t been that impressed with Cuisinart in other things I’ve bought.
What’s a toaster? Just kidding —— grew up with one -— the really oldfashioned kind— years ago.
People collect those, among other old appliances. Some of them were very beautiful.
I had an art-deco designed waffle iron of my grandmothers. It was broken, and I didn’t realize at the time that it could be fixed and might be valuable, so I tossed it. I kicked myself when I found out...
quote They need to make a basic car that would be cheaper for lower income people to buy. But I’ve wondered if it’s even possible with all the regulations there are now
Government regulations benefit large corporations by stifling choices.
I think that email got some wierd routing and took about 40 years to get to you.
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