this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 242 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I'm a high school teacher and I recently was discussing this. Protip: don't talk to 14 year olds about how if something is in between hard and soft, it's firm. 🙄

[–] CascadianBeam 109 points 1 year ago (9 children)

There’s a surprisingly more expansive demographic that pro tip applies to.

[–] steakmeout 99 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You called out “tip”, but you left “expansive” just lying there helpless?

[–] MudSkipperKisser 27 points 1 year ago

Don’t worry, it’ll rise to the occasion

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago

I'm 41f (going on 13 at times), and this is why my husband hates(loves) having me around the shop - all the mechanical everything is full of euphemisms and innuendo. "mating surfaces" 😂

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[–] kog 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like you should really have seen that one coming.

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[–] kog 85 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Firmware is just software that runs in a different place.

Source: me, I write firmware sometimes at work.

[–] Dnn 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, it's usually closer to the hardware though. Your average x86/64 software dev doesn't have to struggle with pins, addresses, buses and timings that much, if at all.

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[–] infinite_zero 72 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

Pants? Shat.

[–] dopeshark 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] ellesper 57 points 1 year ago
[–] jantin 46 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Wait... It's not "firm" as in "company that made the stuff"? FIRMware = the official software a firm pushes to patch things they make

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[–] fubo 43 points 1 year ago (4 children)

By the way, "joystick" was kinda rude back in the day, but nobody even notices now.

[–] cybervseas 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What was more acceptable? "Control stick"?

[–] fubo 40 points 1 year ago (4 children)

No, "joystick" was the original term. Everyone in the past were a bunch of perverts.

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[–] axtualdave 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Disco stick, as in

"Let's have some fun, this beat is sick / I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago

TIL! I have never even wondered why it is called that. Just took it as a fact and went along with it.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Damn… I always thought it meant the “firm” putting their “ware” on the chips. 😂

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[–] MrBodyMassage 33 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Anyone remember shareware?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (8 children)

200+ Shareware games on a CD, played the shit outta those. And they came in magazines or were given out completely free.

I believe demos for games should still be the norm.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Then there's wetware (people).

I miss some of the older ones from my college days (1990s).. million logical instructions per second (megalips), and measuring mouse speed in mickeys/pixel.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Extra firmware cannot be modified.

Firm firmware might be able to be modified, but documentation is largely unknown.

Silken firmware is easily modified by the user.

These names are taken from tofu packaging.

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[–] candyman337 25 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

My non-tech wife tried to tell me “obviously that’s why it’s called that” when I’ve been writing software (and even some minor firmware hacking) for 30 years.

Is this the real life?

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Can someone ELI5 what firmware actually is though? I kind of knew it was half way between, but i don’t know what that looks like.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Hardware is the physical part of computer.

Software is the code that runs on the computer to do the thing you want to do.

Firmware is the code that is installed on the hardware itself, usually in some sort of permanent or semi-permanent memory to make the hardware work.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

It's software that lives in the hardware. It provides low-level control and functionality specific to that device. It runs on the hardware itself, not the CPU of the computer.

For example, a hard drive. We don't want the OS to have to know how to interact with every type of hard drive. Seagate does things differently than Western Digital, an SSD works very different than a hard drive, etc.. The OS sends the same commands to all types of hard drives, but each hard drive needs to know how to actually comply with the commands. If the OS is asking for a dozen different files all over the drive, it would be dumb to try and read them all at the same time. The OS doesn't really know where they are on the spinning disk, but the drive does. Firmware written specifically for the device can do a much better job planing how to fetch the data so the read head doesn't need to go back and forth a bunch of times, but instead make one good pass fetching all the data as it comes to it.

Hope that helps.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

oh my god you blew my mind and I also work in IT

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Wow. I've never connected that dot either. Cool!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Started computer science in grade school with only an hour of actual computer time a week. A LOT of theory and history. Charles Babbage, Ada, ENIAC, etc.

This stuff was drilled into our heads. Same with bit, byte and, halfway between bit and byte, a nibble. It's a thing. 4 bits is a nibble.

Funny enough, I couldn't code to save my life now.

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[–] Buffalox 23 points 1 year ago

I think most people get it intuitively without thinking too much about it.

It's software that is tied to the hardware, in the old days most commonly on ROM, which makes it "firm".

Also as many mention, it's tied to the hardware by the "firm" that made the hardware, although I think that is more accidental, it kind of works for the logic too IMO.

It's such a brilliant term that most people generally have an intuitive idea about what it means, without an actual explanation. Today though it's a bit more murky where the line is drawn between software and firmware, since much firmware is distributed through the OS and Drivers, and can be changed on the fly.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Rule of thumb: Firmware is essentially software that can break the hardware if something goes wrong.

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[–] Lachy 21 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I thought this was common knowledge. I distinctly remember this being taught in a basic high school computing class back in the 90’s.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (19 children)
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

How come I never noticed that? That’s brilliant :)

[–] ritswd 19 points 1 year ago

Holy shit! 😱

[–] Throwaway4669332255 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Firmware is the Hardware of Software

[–] formergijoe 31 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I've always thought of it more as the software of hardware.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I thought it had something to do with firms (the noun)...

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