5 ms·

Strong disagree. I do embedded development of varying complexity. I often have to learn and figure out new things, but once I have something figured out, I have

Strong disagree. I do embedded development of varying complexity. I often have to learn and figure out new things, but once I have something figured out, I have it figured out, and I can drill down to hardware register level to figure things out when something is misbehaving. Every single time I touch anything web-related I discover that the entire landscape has shifted, all the tools I used last time are now abandonware, and I have to figure out everything anew. It may be more accessible if you're starting from scratch, but it's a constant treadmill that you instantly fall off of as soon as you do anything else. And when something doesn't work? Good luck finding out what's happening in the countless layers on top of layers on top of layers.

Ginden 5y ago
> all the tools I used last time are now abandonware I think you are exeggarating. Over last few years, there were no hard deprecations, except for AngularJS. Many tools, popular in past, went "maintanence mode" and receive mostly bug fixes, but these tools are still viable.
xondono 5y ago
And yet it’s trivially easy to understand that new shinny thing, and most problems you have, there’s thousands of posts explaining how to solve them. Embedded has advanced a lot on this front, but for a lot if the industry, good luck finding anything but the original documentation.
- Kliment 5y ago
  Maybe it's just me. Vendor documentation in hardware tends to be kinda crap but there's usually plenty of other sources for information from other people who implemented something using the part, and that information doesn't get stale, ever, and documentation state improves over time. I've had problems finding reliable info on what's going on in webdev, most posts are "do this" solutions which don't really help you understand what is happening under the hood, and there are countless crappy tutorials. To be fair, I'm an extreme case, I touch web stuff once every few years, and only if there's really no way around it, and a lot happens in browser capabilities and javascript in a few years.
  - megous 5y ago
    Web APIs are most of the time just added, rarely removed or changed. If you ignore all the frameworks and libraries from random celebrities on github and all the FOMO on not updating them constantly, the base platform is quite solid and versatile enough. Treat MDN as documentation for registers. :)
  - xondono 5y ago
    > but there's usually plenty of other sources for information from other people who implemented something using the part That’s only the case if you use the small (tiny!) subset of parts that everyone uses. If instead of using some nice and common stm32FXX MCU, you need to work with some obscure Renesas or Fujitsu for example, prepare for a world of pain. The good thing with web stuff is that you can swap frameworks until one does what you want nicely, and leave it at that. You can’t really change the IC in your board just because the I2C module is doing something weird.
    - Kliment 5y ago
      I use obscure parts. For example, just this month I've used a part that the manufacturer doesn't admit exists on their website, and a part where the manufacturer doesn't even have a website, and neither is anything widely used. But there's always a small community of people who use the part, and we cling to each other and compare notes vigorously.
boppo1 5y ago
Can one self-teach about embedded enough to find employment?
- AnyTimeTraveler 5y ago
  I'd certainly think so. I almost did. I initially learned Java on my own. It's good to know at least one full programming language before diving into embedded programming, I think. Then got into Arduino programming. There are tutorials for that online. Try communicating with other Chips like a Shift-Register, then something that uses a standard serial protocol (ex. I²C). When you feel like you have a good grasp of the basics, I recommend getting a development board and doing the same there. Most Microcontrollers (ARM Cortex Processors at least) are pretty similar: You get a datasheet and a User's Manual. The User's Manual describes a bunch memory addresses, which control the built-in peripherals. There are excellent descriptions of what value will give you what result, but it can be a bit daunting to get your head around it at first. I recommend a chip that has a so called "Board support Package". I have experience with LPCOPEN. This will make things a bit easier, as you don't have to figure out each register address for each thing and can instead use functions like "Chip_TIMER_Enable(timer_t timer)". There is a lot more to it, but once you get started, you usually always see the next step.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    Neat, thanks for the detailed answer!
- structural 5y ago
  I self-taught enough to design and build a working PCB (that passed a bunch of certification testing), including writing programs for an ARM Cortex microcontroller. Took about six months of learning and then a couple months of design/implementation to get a product that can be sold and have the fundamentals in place to make similar kinds of products much more rapidly. It's very doable with dedicated study and I'd argue it's one of the best ways to get your design ability to rise to the level of being able to build something from scratch, without reference to other code / searching google for answers.
- 5y ago

Ginden 5y ago

> all the tools I used last time are now abandonware I think you are exeggarating. Over last few years, there were no hard deprecations, except for AngularJS. Many tools, popular in past, went "maintanence mode" and receive mostly bug fixes, but these tools are still viable.

xondono 5y ago

And yet it’s trivially easy to understand that new shinny thing, and most problems you have, there’s thousands of posts explaining how to solve them. Embedded has advanced a lot on this front, but for a lot if the industry, good luck finding anything but the original documentation.

Kliment 5y ago
Maybe it's just me. Vendor documentation in hardware tends to be kinda crap but there's usually plenty of other sources for information from other people who implemented something using the part, and that information doesn't get stale, ever, and documentation state improves over time. I've had problems finding reliable info on what's going on in webdev, most posts are "do this" solutions which don't really help you understand what is happening under the hood, and there are countless crappy tutorials. To be fair, I'm an extreme case, I touch web stuff once every few years, and only if there's really no way around it, and a lot happens in browser capabilities and javascript in a few years.
- megous 5y ago
  Web APIs are most of the time just added, rarely removed or changed. If you ignore all the frameworks and libraries from random celebrities on github and all the FOMO on not updating them constantly, the base platform is quite solid and versatile enough. Treat MDN as documentation for registers. :)
- xondono 5y ago
  > but there's usually plenty of other sources for information from other people who implemented something using the part That’s only the case if you use the small (tiny!) subset of parts that everyone uses. If instead of using some nice and common stm32FXX MCU, you need to work with some obscure Renesas or Fujitsu for example, prepare for a world of pain. The good thing with web stuff is that you can swap frameworks until one does what you want nicely, and leave it at that. You can’t really change the IC in your board just because the I2C module is doing something weird.
  - Kliment 5y ago
    I use obscure parts. For example, just this month I've used a part that the manufacturer doesn't admit exists on their website, and a part where the manufacturer doesn't even have a website, and neither is anything widely used. But there's always a small community of people who use the part, and we cling to each other and compare notes vigorously.

boppo1 5y ago

Can one self-teach about embedded enough to find employment?

AnyTimeTraveler 5y ago
I'd certainly think so. I almost did. I initially learned Java on my own. It's good to know at least one full programming language before diving into embedded programming, I think. Then got into Arduino programming. There are tutorials for that online. Try communicating with other Chips like a Shift-Register, then something that uses a standard serial protocol (ex. I²C). When you feel like you have a good grasp of the basics, I recommend getting a development board and doing the same there. Most Microcontrollers (ARM Cortex Processors at least) are pretty similar: You get a datasheet and a User's Manual. The User's Manual describes a bunch memory addresses, which control the built-in peripherals. There are excellent descriptions of what value will give you what result, but it can be a bit daunting to get your head around it at first. I recommend a chip that has a so called "Board support Package". I have experience with LPCOPEN. This will make things a bit easier, as you don't have to figure out each register address for each thing and can instead use functions like "Chip_TIMER_Enable(timer_t timer)". There is a lot more to it, but once you get started, you usually always see the next step.
- boppo1 5y ago
  Neat, thanks for the detailed answer!
structural 5y ago
I self-taught enough to design and build a working PCB (that passed a bunch of certification testing), including writing programs for an ARM Cortex microcontroller. Took about six months of learning and then a couple months of design/implementation to get a product that can be sold and have the fundamentals in place to make similar kinds of products much more rapidly. It's very doable with dedicated study and I'd argue it's one of the best ways to get your design ability to rise to the level of being able to build something from scratch, without reference to other code / searching google for answers.
5y ago