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The sad thing is I was talking last week to a former coworker with 20 years of hardcore embedded programming experience and he is thinking of going into web pro

The sad thing is I was talking last week to a former coworker with 20 years of hardcore embedded programming experience and he is thinking of going into web programming because of better opportunities there. I spent the first few years of my career doing hard (as in deadlines not effort) real time embedded software and I think it made me a better programmer. However being able to work from a laptop anywhere I want instead of being stuck in a test lab with bus analyzers, scopes, data analyzers and bond out emulators booping all around me is a nicer lifestyle I'll have to admit.

joezydeco 14y ago
Totally agree. Being embedded usually means long hours in labs next to machinery that's half-working and half-smoking. You also don't get bean bags and foosball tables. I'm going to spend all Spring arguing with a customer to spend the extra $5 on their bill of materials to use a better processor that I won't have to band-aid 3 years from now when the current one goes obsolete or can't handle what I know their roadmap involves. This a $10,000 product with 500 EAU. That's $2500 retail. Google will spend $2500 on employee soft drinks before I finish typing this sentence. I've been in 20+ years as well and I kick myself a lot over not going the way of the web developer. After all, what's web programming other than finding new and interesting ways to concatenate strings? =) Sorry, embedded dev joke there. But as I get older and the greenhorns out of college can't tell me the difference between ASLA and ROLA, it kind of gives me some reassurance that my skills will be needed and valuable for the time to come.
robocat 14y ago
I am unsure that most good embedded programmers would have a personality type compatible with web programming. Embedded software requires attention to detail, and a continual focus on reliability. It seems to me that web development often involves shoving shoddy solutions out the door, and often encourages a certain cowboy mentality. Alternatively to try and make an elegant and correct solution for browsers (my goal) is frustrating and dissapointing due to the thousands of meaningless browser bugs and standards faults, and the ugly compromises that are forced to be made... Embedded vendor toolchains and hardware bugs are a dream in comparison! At least that is my experience coming from an embedded programming background and now five years working on deep DOM foo... Slowly poisoning my brain with browser crud. Unfortunately business reasons often lead to choosing the browser as a delivery platform regardless of its numerous downsides :'(
danielweber 14y ago
Has anyone ever composed a chart of how the pay between various disciplines in EECS? Say, Java developer vs PHP developer vs embedded engineer vs appsec engineer? Sounds like a fun HN project.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  EETimes used to do an annual salary survey of various types of embedded/EE/system engineers, but I can't find a recent one. It's behind a paywall perhaps.

joezydeco 14y ago

Totally agree. Being embedded usually means long hours in labs next to machinery that's half-working and half-smoking. You also don't get bean bags and foosball tables. I'm going to spend all Spring arguing with a customer to spend the extra $5 on their bill of materials to use a better processor that I won't have to band-aid 3 years from now when the current one goes obsolete or can't handle what I know their roadmap involves. This a $10,000 product with 500 EAU. That's $2500 retail. Google will spend $2500 on employee soft drinks before I finish typing this sentence. I've been in 20+ years as well and I kick myself a lot over not going the way of the web developer. After all, what's web programming other than finding new and interesting ways to concatenate strings? =) Sorry, embedded dev joke there. But as I get older and the greenhorns out of college can't tell me the difference between ASLA and ROLA, it kind of gives me some reassurance that my skills will be needed and valuable for the time to come.

robocat 14y ago

I am unsure that most good embedded programmers would have a personality type compatible with web programming. Embedded software requires attention to detail, and a continual focus on reliability. It seems to me that web development often involves shoving shoddy solutions out the door, and often encourages a certain cowboy mentality. Alternatively to try and make an elegant and correct solution for browsers (my goal) is frustrating and dissapointing due to the thousands of meaningless browser bugs and standards faults, and the ugly compromises that are forced to be made... Embedded vendor toolchains and hardware bugs are a dream in comparison! At least that is my experience coming from an embedded programming background and now five years working on deep DOM foo... Slowly poisoning my brain with browser crud. Unfortunately business reasons often lead to choosing the browser as a delivery platform regardless of its numerous downsides :'(

danielweber 14y ago

Has anyone ever composed a chart of how the pay between various disciplines in EECS? Say, Java developer vs PHP developer vs embedded engineer vs appsec engineer? Sounds like a fun HN project.

joezydeco 14y ago
EETimes used to do an annual salary survey of various types of embedded/EE/system engineers, but I can't find a recent one. It's behind a paywall perhaps.