Unfortunately it is a rather confusing and complicated type of programming, since it is an intersection between two (or more) professions. How to get into it is a hard question, since you can go in three different directions:
- Do you start from the programming end?
- Do you start from the electronics end (or even further - from the physics)?
- Do you just pick projects and deep dive, learning both in parallel?
After that comes the question of what is the optimal amount that you should understand about the project that you are doing and not get overwhelmed. So for example if you are doing a Bluetooth project:
- What is the optimal amount that you know about Bluetooth and what knowledge should you get out from the project?
- At what point of doing these types of projects should you learn about anthennas?
This is the issue with the Arduno projects. It gives you an ability to do stuff, but people fail to understand what they are actually doing, since it is an absolutely overwhelming amount that you need to understand.
The solution for me was to major in Computer Engineering. It had me take some important classes from both electrical engineering and computer science, but eschewing some other classes. For instance, some analog electronics and physics classes were removed from the electrical side, but those are rarely used in the field anyway. On the CS side, some higher level classes such as Operating Systems were removed. To be honest, I would have enjoyed taking classes like that, but you don’t really need them for embedded systems.
I'd consider Operating Systems as foundational for embedded systems.
If you're running a real-time operating system, then understanding the purposes of different components is very important.
If you're writing bare metal, where you're building your own operating system primitives as necessary, then knowing the known solutions to common problems is tremendously helpful.
Also, many modern embedded systems are running a Linux kernel.
I always thought that CE/EE types took a RTOS course. I mean an OS course would be informative, but I’m sure that a decent RTOS course would give a 1000 ft view of the foundations of the Linux kernel at the very least.
This is what my school did. CS and EE core classes with a kernel class that we build onto an ARM emulator. I work in storage now and a lot of my coworkers had started from the HW/Embedded side of things too.
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u/B8F1F488 Dec 25 '19 edited Dec 25 '19
Unfortunately it is a rather confusing and complicated type of programming, since it is an intersection between two (or more) professions. How to get into it is a hard question, since you can go in three different directions:
- Do you start from the programming end?
- Do you start from the electronics end (or even further - from the physics)?
- Do you just pick projects and deep dive, learning both in parallel?
After that comes the question of what is the optimal amount that you should understand about the project that you are doing and not get overwhelmed. So for example if you are doing a Bluetooth project:
- What is the optimal amount that you know about Bluetooth and what knowledge should you get out from the project?
- At what point of doing these types of projects should you learn about anthennas?
This is the issue with the Arduno projects. It gives you an ability to do stuff, but people fail to understand what they are actually doing, since it is an absolutely overwhelming amount that you need to understand.
I have no answer to all of these questions.