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What aspect of systems programming would you like to be enlightened about? I do a lot of consumer electronics programming, which I think falls into that catego
by simmons 10y ago
What aspect of systems programming would you like to be enlightened about? I do a lot of consumer electronics programming, which I think falls into that category.
I grew up learning programming on a Commodore 64, where getting anything done meant twiddling bits and writing to registers of various hardware devices. Writing device drivers today can provide the same sort of thrill, since the work is quite similar. A lot of my time in high school and college in the 90's was spent learning all about UNIX and Linux, so it feels very natural today when I develop user-space tools that bring value to the user. Outside of nostalgia, there's plenty of bleeding-edge work to keep things interesting -- audio/video processing, extending platforms such as Android, security, etc.
- geekam 10y agoSounds exciting. I want to know how to make a switch, if one can. I am in the same position (mostly webdev) as the gp. I do understand that "systems programming" is very broad.
- simmons 10y agoI get the impression that most people I've worked with in the CE world come from non-CE programming backgrounds, so I doubt there are major obstacles. The biggest help would be familiarity with C/C++ programming, and being comfortable with the practices needed to use these languages properly (e.g. explicit memory management in C, RAII idioms in C++). (Next-generation systems languages like Rust can't come fast enough, in my opinion.)