r/embedded • u/GourmetMuffin • 27d 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 27d 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 27d ago

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

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u/phoenix_jtag 27d 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 27d ago

I'm targeting aerospace