I am also a software engineer (in part) and I basically agree with everything you say, except, I don't really feel like I'm missing out. I have a huge amount o

I am also a software engineer (in part) and I basically agree with everything you say, except, I don't really feel like I'm missing out. I have a huge amount of respect for the people doing this, and it does look like great fun for them to do it and I do enjoy reading about them doing it but the idea of hooking up hundreds of logic probes and analyzing code on a logic analyzer sounds like something that is, personally, a nightmare. But, this is coming from a guy who hasn't picked up a soldering iron without burning himself on it. That said, the EE class I took in college was by far my favorite (and the only one I regularly attended -- before I left), but I was always more entranced by the theoretical than the practical side of it.