[wwalker3]

I totally agree with these guys that getting out the soldering iron and working on real hardware is satisfying as hell.

But ironically, many hardware engineers like me spend all day writing what's essentially software (Verilog code) and running it in a simulator (VCS). Eventually we send a binary file (GDSII) that represents the chip layout off to the fab, and though we do get real chips back from Taiwan, most of us never lay hands on them.