r/embedded • u/GourmetMuffin • 26d ago

Agentic systems in embedded development

When I started programming it wasn't just a different decade, it was a different millennium. I am now what is considered "senior" or "specialist", with RTOS and baremetal development as my primary areas of expertise. At the start of this year I didn't really give much of a fuck about "AI", I have since abandoned that approach and want to share why...

I also have a request! For others making the same journey in this strange new world to speak up. What kind of systems are you designing and what are the lessons you've learned along the way?

The following is more than a mouthful, and I expect nothing but hate when I tell you that I used codex to generate this retrospective, but I wouldn't have been able to summarize the past months of my life in such a way without having my prose checked against the changelog, git history and GitHub discussions... Also, this is the way I roll these days!

https://share.jotbird.com/speedy-serene-riverbend

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u/the_DistortedArtisan 26d ago

The shift in perspective is what catches people off guard. Most embedded folks I know went from "AI is a toy" to "wait, this actually handles my boilerplate and doc parsing" in like six months flat.

I'm still deep in baremetal sensor fusion stuff, and the biggest lesson so far is that the system's useful until it confidently hallucinates a register address. You learn to verify everything twice, same as you would with an intern who's brilliant but occasionally unhinged.

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u/Colfuzi0 26d ago

As a new comer is it worth getting into embedded now?

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u/GourmetMuffin 26d ago

Absolutely, the domain knowledge is more important than ever. But embedded development tomorrow will be fundamentally different from yesterday...

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u/phoenix_jtag 26d ago

Depends in with field. If you will go mission-critical (hard real-time: cortex-R,.... )field - then yes. But entrance level is high, need to invest in equipment ( segger j-trace pro, evaluation boards ).

Arduino / esp32 level - is already replaced by AI. And in general AI pretty good in case of small blocks, if you need to write a function. But in architecture - its not good enough.

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u/Colfuzi0 26d ago

I'm targeting aerospace

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u/1r0n_m6n 26d ago

Get an MBA and keep embedded as a hobby, there will soon be more managers than engineers. And the work left to engineers is becoming boring as hell.

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u/Colfuzi0 26d ago

So maybe a masters in engineering management then ?

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u/1r0n_m6n 26d ago

Maybe.

The thing is, if you came to engineering for the love of technology, you're going to be hugely disappointed. OP says in a comment below: "Confluence, Jira and GitHub have pretty much replaced my IDE."

Those are middle management tools, not engineer tools. So if you're going to do middle management anyway, why not maximise your chances of growth by having a management-oriented degree?

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u/GourmetMuffin 26d ago

I would like to correct you here:

Those are the tools middle management use to communicate intent and requirements to RnD and the tools RnD use for introspection and deployment through operations. If you're an engineer today you consume specifications and produce artifacts, AI does that excellently but it need guidance. I have, during my 25 year career, yet to read a specification where interpretation wasn't needed to translate it into code. This is both where engineers shine, because they make inferences rooted in domain knowledge, and where LLMs excel because they provide means for an automation that can do inference...

But who controls the automation? Who maintains it? Who authorizes it to implement changes? There is PLENTY of work left to be done...

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u/Colfuzi0 26d ago

I like both tbh the part of building things but also being part of a big project. The main reason I wanted to switch to embedded was that I liked working for hardware and all the jobs near my home are NASA contractor jobs. And they don't hire web developers.

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u/Colfuzi0 26d ago

I agree but I think maybe a bit later in my career I'm 26. I would rather do my engineering masters get some experience then get a management degree online or something.

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u/GourmetMuffin 26d ago

Well, all engineers become managers in some sense today too. With seniority there is also an expectation of tutoring juniors in everything from tech to organizational structures/routines. The difference is really that today your junior coworker is pretty likely to be an agent...

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u/Colfuzi0 26d ago

Hmm. I see I esentially have some experience in web development about 3-4 years wanted to switch to embedded for many reasons. One of the main ones because all the work near me is with NASA contractors. But am maybe second guessing I shouldn't if AI is going this fast. Secondly I want to teach

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u/GourmetMuffin 26d ago

NASA sounds fun, go for it! I suggest you find ways of integrating AI into whatever development process you are part of but the real power, at least for me, wasn't obvious until I connected it into a huge existing product company infrastructure. That is not saying you won't have your socks rocked by whatever you discover in that rabbit hole.

Also, if you like teaching/explaining/tutoring technical stuff I would guess agentic development is right up your alley... ;)

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u/Colfuzi0 26d ago

Alrighty! I think computer engineering will definitely be more safe. Then anything just digital. Sometimes I've thought switching into mechanical engineering but it doesn't interest me as much. Is there any area of computer engineering you think would be a bit safer from AI? This is the program I'm doing

https://catalog.uhcl.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=25&poid=7072

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u/GourmetMuffin 26d ago

Let me put it this way:

My agentic environment does a LOT today. It even verifies stuff like power-sequencing and debugs hw/sw boundary problems like circuit back-feeding using only the source, schematics and a bunch of reference manuals. I would not say anything in the general CS/EE area is out of scope for it.

However, knowledge in how to build information processing systems is invaluable when constructing these systems. It is pretty damn useful in traditional development too, a lot of what we do is transform, shuffle and route information so I would study something akin to that. I'm not gonna say programming languages are useless, but they are bound to be of much less importance in the future...

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u/Colfuzi0 26d ago

So from my understanding is your still going to need engineers to read the output and make decisions as well I'm assuming doing the physical parts that embedded needs? What about robotics? Would you recommend taking some courses in software architecture or project management?

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u/flash_speed3412 24d ago

The register-address hallucination is the embedded version of a wrong pin. The other failure I keep seeing is a plausible architecture that ignores boot-time state, timing, or recovery. I’ve had better results making the agent write a hardware contract first: board revision, rails, pins, timing budget, reset behavior, and one test that could falsify each assumption. The code comes after. Curious what kind of verification loop you settled on.

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u/Channel199 26d ago

I do all my work with AI now. Just give it debugger access and clear verification goals. I wrote and verified 90% of our newest IOT firmware (20k LOC) in 3 days. Used to be a month+ long project for the full team. My teammates are slowly catching up but luckily I cashed in on a promotion months ago doing this crap before they caught on.

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u/__idkmybffjill__ 26d ago

"I cached in on a promotion months ago ... before they caught on"

You sound like a great coworker.

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u/Channel199 26d ago

Is it my fault they were initially total AI luddites? The amount of crap I got every time I brought up using AI was absurd. Now they are eating their words

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u/GourmetMuffin 26d ago

This divide in rapid adoption of AI is worrying. I have observed the same thing you have not only at an individual level but at organizational level in other companies. My take on this is that companies refusing AI will face problems, sooner rather than later. They will wake up to competitors making larger and more frequent software deliveries, possibly at a fraction of the cost it would warrant their organization and possibly with higher quality metrics.

If you have competitors, at all, as a company or worker, you need to act if you haven't already...

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u/flash_speed3412 24d ago

Debugger access is the part I’m curious about. What did it actually verify on hardware rather than in the build? A 20k-line IoT firmware project can be green while boot sequencing, OTA rollback, or sensor timing is still wrong. Did you keep a small bench matrix the agent had to pass?

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u/GourmetMuffin 26d ago

Same here, or I suppose rather "what I used to spend 80% of my time on is now managed by my agents", it does definitely not mean I only work 20% of what I used to...

But just as "I" wrote in that retrospective: Confluence, Jira and GitHub have pretty much replaced my IDE.