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Comment by Simon_O_Rourke | Hacker News Reader

Started doing a Masters in embedded software design a couple of years ago, and I could condense this guide into a more succinct explanation.

Getting started with embedded systems is being repeatedly told "you're wrong" or "that won't work" until you give up and do something else.

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You could say that about almost anything difficult that requires a lot of feedback and/or practice.

Certainly the real embedded world, which is beyond embedded "toys" [1], can be a cultural shock when you come from general CS.

And indeed, just like "making games" can be attractive for young people but far less so as an actual job (from what I've heard), embedded can be fun when playing with IoT-like toys, but it actually needs a lot of patience and tenacity when you do it as a job (from experience).

[1] No disdain here. Those MCUs and SoCs are used in actual products, but here they are not used "seriously".

Can you elaborate? I don't understand what you mean (as somebody with 10+ years in embedded software + electronics space).

> Getting started with embedded systems is being repeatedly told "you're wrong" or "that won't work" until you give up and do something else.

I had no idea I was doing embedded systems for so long.

The hard part about getting started with embedded systems is that the intersection of what you have, what you can do with it, what you know you can do with it and what you actually want to do is most likely empty.

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