30 years ago? I remember: 1) Burn and crash embedded development – burn EPROMs, run until your system reset. Use serial output for debugging. Later, demand you

30 years ago? I remember: 1) Burn and crash embedded development – burn EPROMs, run until your system reset. Use serial output for debugging. Later, demand your dev board contains EEPROM to speed up this cycle. 2) Tools cost $$$. Cross-compilers weren’t cheap. ICE (in-circuit emulation) for projects with a decent budget. 3) DOS 5.0 was boss! Command line everything with Brief text editor with text windows. 4) Upgrading to a 486dx, with S3 VGA – Wolfenstein 3D never looked so good! 5) The S3 API was easy for 1 person to understand. With a DOS C compiler you could roll your own graphics with decent performance. 6) ThinkPad was the best travel laptop. 7) Sharing the single AMPs cellphone with your travel mates. Service was expensive back then! 8) Simple GANTT charts scheduled everything, +/- 2 weeks. 9) You could understand the new Intel processors – i860 and i960 – with just the manuals Intel provided. 10) C Users Group, Dr Dobbs, Byte, Embedded Systems Journal and other mags kept you informed. 11) Pay wasn’t great as a software dev. No stock options, bonus, or overtime. If your project ran late you worked late! A few years later the dot com boom raised everyone’s wages. 12) Design principles could be as simple as a 1-page spec, or many pages, depending on the customer. Military customers warranted a full waterfall with pseudo-code, and they paid for it. 13) Dev is much easier today as most tools are free, and free info is everywhere. However, system complexity quickly explodes as even “simple” devices support wireless interfaces and web connectivity. In the old days “full-stack” meant an Ethernet port.