The problem with IoT development is simple really.... it’s complex. The level of expertise needed to tackle each hurdle and develop robust, scalable and secure connected products is excruciatingly high. Still, the demand is growing and the forecasts are expecting 20-50 billion connected devices by 2020. The question begs, how do we overcome the complexity?
The Hurdles
There are two main hurdles to overcome when engineering connected products. One is the complexity in developing embedded systems and the other, the sheer lack of expertise in the field.
Development complexity
Embedded systems are constrained. Most modern tools and frameworks are not applicable in this space. This means, developers are left with low-level technologies and languages like Assembly and C.
Further, the embedded hardware market is very fragmented. Each hardware platform has it’s own unique capabilities and rough edges which developers need know about if they choose to work with the platform.
One of the outcomes of this complex development is that often when it comes to network communication, the security aspect is often overlooked due to it’s complexity. And this opens a whole other pandora's box of issues.
Lack of experts
Today, device programming is in the realm of experienced engineers who are highly skilled in the embedded space and able to deal with the above outlined complexity. They are rare, they are expensive and have many opportunities knocking on their doors. While we don’t begrudge anyone that level of expertise and commend any engineer for having it, this is a big problem for business of any size. How can they attract and maintain an embedded engineer?
The lack of experienced programmers also means that the billions of connected devices over the coming years look less likely. If we don’t have the programming power, then how will we get there?
A solution
Already, IoT development has overcome hurdles with regards to cost of development, available connectivity and infrastructure. In the spirit of this evolution, more solutions need to be found to make IoT development more accessible to all developers. Plenty of people are looking into this, so this is only one solution to this problem.
Back in 2004, I wrote Mongoose, an embedded web server, with the aim to deliver a simple, single file, open source solution. Over the years I realised that many people use Mongoose as an IoT gateway. Mongoose itself grew to facilitate these needs but eventually, it wasn’t enough. What I felt was needed was an IoT infrastructure that would be as simple. Well, perhaps not one file to run, but still, accessible to the majority of developers.
In my opinion, taking the complexity out of the development and opening the market to more developers will result in more connected products that are safe, scalable and meet consumer demand. The key: JavaScript.
One of the things that enabled the personal computer revolution was the widespread use of scripting programming languages like Perl, Python, Ruby or PHP. The most commonly used scripting language is probably JavaScript, which runs on every browser and powers the Web. Scripting languages enable rapid development, they are safer and simpler to use than any alternatives.
Every scripting language has an engine, which is a program that executes scripting instructions. Unfortunately, existing scripting engines are too big and resource consuming to fit into constrained embedded environments. That's one of the reasons why the embedded market is not using them and is stuck on the old venerable Assembly and C/C++ technologies.
Change in action
We’ve seen it work in action with Peeply by Building 10, who integrated Smart.js into their smart peephole: “[...] it gives us the performance and speed to be deeply integrated with the hardware, while providing ease of use and the flexibility of a high-level programming language.”
In my opinion, making coding simpler means that more time can be spent on ensuring secure data transfers and awesome product functionality. Opening the embedded space to more developers, just brings more cooks to the kitchen with more great ideas and ambition.
About the author: Sergey Lyubka is CTO and Co-Founder of Cesanta. He is the author of Mongoose (embedded web server) and an author of Smart.js (full-stack IoT platform). Together with his team, he aims to bring all devices online.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
