Interesting, I felt the opposite. Doing stuff with hardware expands your creative horizon to do things in the real world, freeing yourself from the confines of

Interesting, I felt the opposite. Doing stuff with hardware expands your creative horizon to do things in the real world, freeing yourself from the confines of the virtual realm. 3D print what you need, make it come alive with MCUs. Also much of modern software development feels like just plugging lego bricks, but in embedded you actually have to know how stuff works, down to the register level. But then those were purely hobby projects, maybe it feels very different when doing it for a living.