Re: (Excessive?) Complexity

On Sun, 09 Feb 2025 11:32:45 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

I write data collection software.  We have to handle data from all sorts
of different devices, some of which generate data whose format varies
only slightly from each other. Good luck talking the vendor into
changing his specs to something more standard (or, worst case, something
that is even syntactically correct).  You can create a different program
for each layout, or you can write a front-end which resolves the
differences.  At this point, designing code which can automatically
identify which format we're dealing with is a win, since it's one less
configuration setting that the customer can get wrong (and one less
headache for the support people).

We've got one of those Swiss Army Knife apps for AVL (Automatic Vehicle
Location). 25 years ago Trimble was the big name, at least in the
emergency services world and the devices were fairly expensive. TAIP was
their creation.

https://kipdf.com/trimble-ascii-interface-protocol-
taip_5ac59a361723ddd07a3fd408.html

As time went on NMEA became more popular.

https://www.gpsworld.com/what-exactly-is-gps-nmea-data/

Of course there were companies that use their own scheme including packed
binary data. The actual interface might be UDP, TCP, or even serial for
the old stuff. There are a bunch of configuration options but when the
dust settles we get a latitude and longitude to show the vehicle on a
map.

Other times it makes more sense to have separate applications, reusing the
common code. The problem with maintaining Swiss Army knives is trying to
figure out what they're doing.  I added a DMPP-2020 protocol to one that
already had the functionality but the original programmer had obscured it
so well I didn't recognize it.