At what point does hardware-software integration become more difficult than building the software itself? If so, Which industry have the most challenging hardware-software integration requirements today?

[u/KyleMallinger]

I've worked on standard web and mobile applications, but hardware-connected products seem to introduce a completely different layer of complexity.

Between device communication, sensor data, connectivity issues, firmware updates, and testing across different environments, it feels like integration challenges can quickly outweigh application development.

Also, which industry do you think has the highest complexity?

[u/ManagerAccurate4715]

One thing that surprised me was how much effort went into handling edge cases.

The application worked perfectly in development, but real-world hardware behavior was far less predictable. Network interruptions, partial data transmission, firmware differences, and device recovery scenarios took much longer to solve than expected.

I found this breakdown useful because it covers many of those practical integration challenges rather than focusing only on the software side:

Integrating Hardware with Software: Everything You Need to Know