It wasn’t the employability that attracted me to software (back then, it was still a nascent industry, so the employment was still spotty); it was that software doesn’t really have limits.

The physical realm is full of limits. Much of electronic design is about working within hard, physical boundaries (I was an RF engineer, so there were a lot of boundaries). For example, you could see the “ringing” in the scope traces (those little “bumps” near the corners of the voltage level transitions). Ringing can have serious consequences in real life, and things like track length, or even solder burrs, can affect it. Then, you have attack and decay, which can be affected by things like cable length. Basically, there’s no such thing as a perfect square wave.

Also, when you are running at GHz frequencies (not really an issue, back then), every solder burr is a microwave transmitter. That’s fun.

Software didn’t have these “fences.” I could go pretty much wherever my imagination took me.

I’ve always been a cantankerous bastard. I don’t like being told where I can’t go.

Knowing the physical realm helps a lot, when it comes to understanding software, though. I’m glad for it.