[cossray]

Claiming a serial interface task will equip you with 90% of Embedded Systems is the biggest disrespect of a profession I've ever encountered. To outsiders, the field might be regarded to be just a microcontroller playground. But the spectrum of hardware design and programming in the field is at an unprecedented levels. PCB design, power supply, SoCs, SBCs, FPGAs, peripheral interfaces, Embedded C and Linux software development...to mention but a few; are some of the skills a modern embedded system engineer needs at the lower level.

[tonyarkles]

Well, yes and no. Depends a lot on whether you want to do the "full stack" or not there. Lots of bigger companies have EEs to do the PCB, power supply, pinmux, etc stuff, and then embedded software people to write the code that runs on it. An embedded software developer probably should be comfortable using an oscilloscope/logic analyzer in a pinch, but all of the hardware design tasks aren't necessarily required for doing embedded software work.

I say this all as a "full stack" embedded guy. I'd love to have someone else take on part of it, but I'm a solo consultant right now :). Did both EE and CS in school, and more than happy to do whole projects end-to-end, but I also don't expect EEs to be fantastic programmers, or embedded software people to be fantastic hardware designers.

[stmL]

I interpreted the parent comment as do all of the parts yourself. Pick microcontrollers, design the PCB with power supply, find the right toolchain for both microcontrollers and implement serial communication. Which is almost 90% percent of the job.

Also, does FPGA come to mind when embedded is mentioned? I always assume that FPGA is a whole another subject (only FPGA not the board part).

[non-entity]

> always assume that FPGA is a whole another subject

This has been my assumption as well. I looked a while back at learning FPGA development because it seemed rather interesting, but quickly decided to go another route after seeing and talking to some FPGA guys. From what I saw it does not in any way resemble what I'm used to as a software developer

[colechristensen]

This is an overreaction, and really not a very nice way to interact with people.

I was talking about embedded development which doesn't really have anything to do with PCB design, power, FPGA, etc. You don't need those things to be a programmer working on embedded systems or microcontrollers.

Implementing a serial interface in software flipping GPIOs up and down will expose you to a whole lot of the necessary ecosystem and if you can do it, you're well past the point where you should be able to get paid to do it and the point where you need a roadmap to tell you where to expand your skills. I didn't say doing it would get you a senior level position or a masters degree in EE.