First off, I have such an easy life you would spit in my eye for whining if you knew me. But today I spent time on the job with some old friends who install mill control computers. These systems do an awful lot of things in pretty ingenious ways. It brought back memories from when I used to do the same thing, but made me sad in a way. I had always wanted to write a mill control language. I have plenty of experience in many, very different, mills and it seems like a natural evolution beyond the very limited and esoteric products that are available commercially. But I don't work in that field anymore and don't have access to the test equipment and live customers a decent project would require. Instead I spend my time these days creating interfaces to systems that have several existing interfaces, architecting systems that do things other systems already do for large companies with websites, and peace making. Diplomacy is eternal and is probably at least 80% of my paycheck by volume. It's amazing how far I've come in my quest to just write some interesting code, and how hard it still is to get the chance. Most of the really interesting work is owned and kept by former employers along the way. What I have available to put up is trivial and rushed because I find it hard to work very long on something that doesn't pay the bills and will probably never be used.
Anybody interested in a mill control language that can run on an x86 processor and use a PLC, RS232/422/485 devices including Opto22, various scale heads, and anything else you can reasonably come up with? Will work for test hardware, manuals and a sense of purpose! Of course, if you want it fast you could pay me too and limit my distractions. Interested parties may inquire below.
No, it wouldn't be like anything I've ever done for a previous employer. (or even seen before) And I would probably want it put under an Open Source license of some sort, and no, it wouldn't look like toadskin.
Posted by bill at November 19, 2003 11:10 PM