I believe ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering) programs still provide a strong background in low-level systems programming. At least, that was the case whe

I believe ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering) programs still provide a strong background in low-level systems programming. At least, that was the case when I was at Purdue 9 years ago. My experience with low-level programming has been a boomerang: focused on embedded systems in college, went gradually further up the stack after school due to my interests, and then gradually drifted back down to low-level C++ as I began working on more complex problems.