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The electronics and oscilloscope is the funnier part but that doesn't help with software development. For some microcontollers and FPGA I had to work with, the

The electronics and oscilloscope is the funnier part but that doesn't help with software development. For some microcontollers and FPGA I had to work with, there is hardly any API documentation. It could take a whole week just to figure out how to blink a LED. It's frustrating. There is zero help available on the internet because nobody uses that. It comes with its own tool chain and there isn't the option to use something else, like CLion or Visual Studio. I'm supposed to make some home automation devices, or an inertial navigation system, or god knows that. It's enough work on its own, I don't have time or energy to fight broken tools. By comparison, android development is a wonder. Development tools that work, long form documentation of every single API and guides and examples. Just plug the USB port and the program loads and it shows debugging output and you can debug line by line and use breakpoints. Having used better development tools, I just have higher standard. I can't tolerate embedded anymore. I hope there are some working tools for some chips of some manufacturers nowadays, but wouldn't know.

btkramer9 8y ago
What do you do now? Sometimes I feel the same way but I'm still in the embedded world. I continually ask if it's worth transitioning into web. What else is there to transition to?
- user5994461 8y ago
  I do something mixing development and infrastructure, in finance. What there is depends on where you live. In London/NYC, it's either web or finance. In the silicon valley, it's all web. In Washington it's government contracting. Do what needs doing.
simias 8y ago
The limitations of low level debugging are often just that: hardware limitations. The scenario of debugging Android applications is really bending the limit of what I would consider "embedded development", it's very high level. ARM does provide debugging tool that can get to very low level (you can even step through bootloader code if you want) but they generally require specific hardware support and the license is pretty expensive. I agree that documentation is often terrible though, although obviously that's pretty vendor-dependent. For instance regarding FPGA development Xilinx tends to have pretty decent docs while Altera (or IntelFPGA as it's now called) is pretty bad at it. Same goes for SoC vendors, Ti is pretty good but I've been a lot less lucky with other vendors.
- yitchelle 8y ago
  The other factor for getting good documentation and support is how big of client you are. Unfortunately, the companies that uses 1000K pieces ARM micros will get better support than the uses 10K pieces.
- user5994461 8y ago
  I wouldn't generally consider Android embedded besides a few use cases as a mobile/handheld device. In my view, tt's a wonderful platform to develop for and that's what every manufacturer should be striving for, or die. Of course there is a difference in capacity between a 8 bit MCU and a Xilinx SoC, they may not be able to cover everything the same, but that doesn't explain why neither have a working example to use an interrupt handler with a push button.

btkramer9 8y ago

What do you do now? Sometimes I feel the same way but I'm still in the embedded world. I continually ask if it's worth transitioning into web. What else is there to transition to?

user5994461 8y ago
I do something mixing development and infrastructure, in finance. What there is depends on where you live. In London/NYC, it's either web or finance. In the silicon valley, it's all web. In Washington it's government contracting. Do what needs doing.

simias 8y ago

The limitations of low level debugging are often just that: hardware limitations. The scenario of debugging Android applications is really bending the limit of what I would consider "embedded development", it's very high level. ARM does provide debugging tool that can get to very low level (you can even step through bootloader code if you want) but they generally require specific hardware support and the license is pretty expensive. I agree that documentation is often terrible though, although obviously that's pretty vendor-dependent. For instance regarding FPGA development Xilinx tends to have pretty decent docs while Altera (or IntelFPGA as it's now called) is pretty bad at it. Same goes for SoC vendors, Ti is pretty good but I've been a lot less lucky with other vendors.

yitchelle 8y ago
The other factor for getting good documentation and support is how big of client you are. Unfortunately, the companies that uses 1000K pieces ARM micros will get better support than the uses 10K pieces.
user5994461 8y ago
I wouldn't generally consider Android embedded besides a few use cases as a mobile/handheld device. In my view, tt's a wonderful platform to develop for and that's what every manufacturer should be striving for, or die. Of course there is a difference in capacity between a 8 bit MCU and a Xilinx SoC, they may not be able to cover everything the same, but that doesn't explain why neither have a working example to use an interrupt handler with a push button.