Software development may include development of new products, modification, reuse or maintenance of existing products. As software engineers, we are concerned with creating and maintaining software applications by applying technologies and practices from computer science, project management, engineering, application domains, and other fields.
We develop software on a fixed price quotation basis. Primarily we develop embedded software, but we also have a wide range of PC programming skills. We have experience in programming server-side, middleware and client-side applications.
A great example of our software development skills would be the Freeway script compiler. This was a challenging project that stretched our embedded programming skills to the max, as we had to implement a rudamentary C compiler on an 8-bit processor with limited resources.
We implemented this compiler using a recursive descent parsing method, which was only made possible by the fact that the Rabbit BIOS support an enormous 2 kilobyte stack.
This project demonstrates that software development on an embedded platform is a completely different kettle of fish to your standard PC software development.
The Freeway was a 'design from scratch' example of software development, but software development also includes maintenance of existing software projects. An Absolute Software example of a maintenance project would be the services we provide for the Sawmills recording studio.
The services we provide for the Sawmills is also very much embedded programming focussed. But instead of designing this project from scratch and then developing it to meet their needs, we have been developing a twenty year old system, in order to keep it up to date.
This type of software development requires that we understand the philosophy of the original programmer and develop the software in a similar vein.
Finally, to illustrate the strength of our software development skills at Absolute Software, I think it is important to mention how we remain at the cutting edge of technology. Not only do we keep bang up to date with the latest silicon by establishing partnerships with chip manufacturers (eg Microchip and FTDI chip), we also focus efforts on innovating for our clients.
We feel that on almost every project we will innovate, and bring something special to the project. For example, on the Silvertree/Icespy project, we introduced the idea of a Macromedia Flash user-interface on the PIC processor. This is a simple but impressive idea that brings a sexy user-interface to an otherwise basic piece of hardware.
In conclusion, at Absolute Software we understand software development in every way! And we know how to apply these skills to embedded programming.
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