I work for the "man" and lucked out in the sense that there are still pockets of new product development where you get to do some interesting coding that has no

I work for the "man" and lucked out in the sense that there are still pockets of new product development where you get to do some interesting coding that has nothing to do with plugging libraries together. And I get to buy a $10K scope if I need it - happy camper! But even without funds or a cushy R&D job, I would go farther and say that this is the best time ever for the type of coding the author suggests is more stimulating: for next to nothing I can buy a fairly powerful microcontroller for robotics or whatever, for less than your monthly smartphone bill you can buy an embedded Linux system and do some really heavy lifting.