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Re:Can you become a firmware engineer(embedded software engi... by smackeyacky on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @10:30PM (#26964796)
Just to expand on this a little, firmware development is hard even for experienced engineers. My experience is with bluetooth firmware but from what I have seen the problems are pretty typical.

For starters, the tools are generally terrible compared to things like Jetbrains or vscode. Each chip vendor has a preferred environment (i.e. Segger for Nordic stuff) or you have to buy something expensive like IAR and they all have quirks. The Ti toolset for bluetooth stuff is a nightmare.

Next, you need to be an excellent C programmer and it helps to have some experience with assembler. You will need that for debugging. If you struggle with pointers or memory addressing or anything like that you will suffer.

Next, you need a good understanding of concepts like interrupts, how data is stored i.e how memory is used for different data. Plus each RTOS is different so while strategies for how you do things are similar, the available tools can be unique to the vendor.

On top of that, you will likely have to work with the hardware engineers on how the chip is set up, which pins are attached to what, how they are attached and other concepts like SPI and other means of getting data in and out.

There is a lot to learn, you need to learn by doing and hopefully with an experienced mentor available. There is nothing like stack overflow to help either, the chip vendors run their own forums and try to help but largely on a custom board you are on your own.

So, no bootcamp could even come close.

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