Ask HN: Possible to transition from application development to embedded systems?

1 points by neuroticfish 7y ago ↗ HN

I'm 30 years old with a B.S. in comp sci and have been professionally developing applications (web and desktop) for about 5 years now. I can't afford to go back to school for a masters to focus on something that's really interesting to me (ocean related stuff) and I'm dreadfully bored with high-level programming and the culture of application development. I'm interested in making a career change to embedded software engineering but not sure how to make the transition.

- What sort of learning resources are best for picking up embedded systems?

- How dramatic of a pay cut would I be taking to jump into the field?

- Is it realistic at this stage in my career to make this transition at all?

1 comment

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deanfranks 7y ago ↗

For better or worse, most commercial embedded development is done in C/C++. If you are already familiar with these, start with Atmel Studio and an AVR 8 bit processor (easier to learn the hardware side, simpler processor) or mbed.org and one of the supported boards (STM32 Nucleos are cheap and have built-in JTAG programmer/debugger with a wide range of processors).

Pay could be higher or lower, you will almost certainly take a cut initially but there are plenty of high paying embedded development jobs.