Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend
I recently had a discussion about how hard it would be to have a system inside a bus to announce the next stop. Sounds like a weekend project right?<p>Think a bit further:<p>- Hardware needs to be resistant to harsh diesel engine vibrations<p>- 3G&#x2F;4G connectivity<p>- Need a mobile data contract with local ISP<p>- Software needs to be able to handle network disconnections<p>- GPS needs to be able to pin-point at which stop the bus is currently stopped, even with bad GPS coverage in larger cities<p>- If the bus skips a stop because of a detour, the software should be able to detect it and announce the next stop<p>- The announcement should be bi-lingual for Airport busses<p>- The announcement should work for people with hearing aids<p>- Server needs to know all bus-stops<p>- Server needs to know different stop types, such as bus terminals, intersection stops, regular stops, hand-over stops, virtual stops<p>- Server needs to be able both work of a yearly bus schedule and real-time update<p>- Server needs to output in an understandable JSON&#x2F;XML because the government subsidies demand an open-data format<p>- Server needs to publish data to an open-data server because of the subsidies<p>- Because the bus-company is sponsored by European Union money the control interface should be translated to German&#x2F;French&#x2F;English&#x2F;Spanish<p>And now this weekend project takes a team of 10 engineers working for a year.