Everyone is talking about software, and maybe that's because this goes without saying, but China's hardware production capabilities are just staggering. Embedde

Everyone is talking about software, and maybe that's because this goes without saying, but China's hardware production capabilities are just staggering. Embedded development has a hugely promising future, especially as microchips continue to add richer feature sets for lower power (and money) costs. And China has been taking that idea of the future and sprinting with it. 'IoT' is a popular buzzword, but IMO the success of companies like DJI better reflects China's growing expertise in blending together a broad range of technical disciplines, many of which are comparatively scorned by educational institutions in the US. Lately I've been floored by the fact that ARM Cortex-M0 and -M3 development boards (48-72MHz, 8-20KB RAM, 64-256KB flash) cost less than $2 each. They blow 'Arduinos' out of the water by an order of magnitude on both cost and capability, as do the similarly-cheap ESP8266 WiFi development boards. What ever happened to making useful things?