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I want to learn real-time programming. I asked this and it's near getting closed:

What features distinguishes real-time from other types of os?

Should I not at all have asked this question or could it have been in scope at some other Q&A site?

Why all the close votes? Becuase its mostly software I'm asking about?

But I got real good answers though, that's why I asked on EE.

Thank you

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    \$\begingroup\$ Sounded like a good question to me and a concept a lot of people don't understand; I gave it an upvote. Apart from a few niche applications like maybe say high-frequency trading I would have thought the primary uses of an RTOS are in embedded type systems or process control. \$\endgroup\$
    – PeterJ
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 6:13

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No, it's not off-topic. In the FAQ, there is a line that says:

... if your question generally covers …

  • the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications

… then you’re in the right place to ask your question!

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  • \$\begingroup\$ But it's awfully near getting closed. Are they voting to close the question for some other reason than being off-topic? \$\endgroup\$
    – Niklas Rosencrantz
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 5:27
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    \$\begingroup\$ @NickRosencrantz No, the votes are for "Off Topic". Some people are sensitive to software questions and vote to close without reading. After all, if it's more than an 8-bit processor, it's gotta belong on StackOverflow, right ;) \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 6:03
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The initial revision of your question had one reference to "Linux" and zero references to any sort of hardware. Even though you knew you were wondering about real-time scheduling for an FPGA project, that wasn't obvious to the people reading the question. Once you added that information, you got seven upvotes (more than most questions) because it was obvious how this question related to electrical engineering.

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If people are going to vote to close this as off-topic, they really should head over to Area 51 and back the new Embedded Programming and Design proposal. Embedded systems programming questions that really don't get good answers on StackOverflow do much better on Electronics, so to a certain degree they need to be on-topic here, at least for now.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I don't know how gauge these things, but that proposal is almost out of definition. Those who stopped by to vote on questions in the past might consider pulling their votes on questions scored above 10 and placing them on lesser scored questions to push it into beta \$\endgroup\$
    – Scott Seidman
    Commented Aug 26, 2013 at 22:00
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I think low level programming that gets envolved with hardware is on topic here, but that particular question was overly broad, ambiguous, and it is not clear what is really being asked. If people are voting to close it, it is probably for those reasons. That was definitely my reason.

I remember seeing it initially and didn't know what you meant by a "real time core". I thought it had something to do with a FPGA, so I skipped it. I see now that you were apparently asking about a real time OS (RTOS) or kernel. That's very different. If you got downvotes, it may have been due to this confusion cause by unconventional use of words.

In any case, I think the problem is not the overall topic but your question in particular. I think the description for not a real question fits pretty well.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Yes, "real-time kernel" is translated to "realtidskärna" in Swedish which means "real-time core". Both "real-time core" and "real-time kernel" get translated to "realtidskärna", hence my mixup. \$\endgroup\$
    – Niklas Rosencrantz
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 15:09
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    \$\begingroup\$ But you voted to close as "Off Topic" \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 15:24
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    \$\begingroup\$ @W5VO: Really? If so, I was probably going thru the review menu and someone had already checked that reason and I wasn't as careful as I should have been to click the Not a real question button instead. Also, just because the majority vote was off topic doesn't mean all individual votes were. Can you actually see that my individual vote was off topic? If so, that was a screwup on my end. \$\endgroup\$
    – Olin Lathrop
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 16:30
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    \$\begingroup\$ All the votes were for "Off Topic" - I see the breakdown of close votes by category. I disagreed with closing as "Off Topic", but if everyone was instead voting as NARQ then I could see that as more valid. \$\endgroup\$
    – W5VO
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 16:43

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