Just like "software" is a huge field with a wide variety of technologies, payscales, opportunities, and niches, so it is hardware.<p>You wouldn't expect someone writing about the opportunities and lessons from the JavaScript/CSS frontend world to have a huge amount of insight into the work and opportunities of firmware developers.<p>So it is with hardware, and personally it frustrates me when software people think they can generalize about the "hardware" space because they printed a 4 layer with JLCPCB and now they know the "hardware" world and its ins and outs.<p>This post is about PCB design and fabrication. The equivalent would be if a hardware person spent a day banging their head against Azure Continuous Integration workflows and wrote a post entitled, "Lessons learned by a hardware guy venturing into software".
The Author stated that they had experienced hostility when asking questions. While I'm not sure to what level their experience was, I can share the many times I've tried to answer a hardware question in many forums , I found the the individual who was asking was just looking for a quick working solution to their design idea (mostly a school project) and not really willing to take input on how to figure the solution out themselves. Many became hostile when I would not provide the schematic (with calculations) for them. That got old fast and convinced me to not try to help out any more. It's unfortunate that I can't share my 30 years of hard earned design experience with someone who truly wants to learn but I don't have the time to determine who is genuine and who is not. I'm just not going to deal with the hassle anymore. I get plenty of that at my day job....and they pay me to tolerate it.
This article initially upset me because it muddied my hardware honeymoon memories and attacked my perceived future. However, I’m glad I read the whole thing because I the author actually did the thing and built something and wrote about it. It is one of those rare blog posts where things don’t go perfectly well and the author is not some sort of flawless god. Experience is gold and this article lays it out raw, I love it.<p>I’m newish to embedded software and hardware and I find it difficult but oh so rewarding. Highly recommended.
I'm on a similar adventure right now, an ex-software person building a motorized iPhone stand that is Bluetooth controlled.<p>It's been fun to see how with Fusion 360, a 3D printer, and JCLPCB you can build all kinds of devices. YouTube and GPT-4 are excellent tutors for hobbyists entering the hardware space.<p>The 2 week wait for custom parts from China makes you realize the advantage they have over there when it comes to the rapid prototyping stage of product development.
>First and Most Important Lesson: If You’re Here for the Money, You’re in the Wrong Place<p>It's worth reiterating this for college students, etc. considering going down the hardware path. While I got a tremendous amount more intellectual satisfaction by going for an electrical engineering degree instead of a CS or even CompEng one, that was because I realized CS was the kind of thing I would <i>end up in anyway</i> and would <i>gladly study on my own terms</i>. Numerical methods in differential equations, not so much.<p>If you do decide to do EE in 2023, I strongly recommend you break the mold of sparkies being atrocious coders. The skills are natural complements, even if for some reason most people like to pretend otherwise. But one is much more lucrative on average.
Anyone suggest some great book recommendations to better understand modern computing hardware?<p>I have these three on my shortlist: (i) The Art of Electronics (3rd edition), written by Horowitz and Hill; (ii) Digital Design and Computer Architecture: ARM Edition; and (iii) The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles, by Nisan & Schoken<p>But keen for more.
I had a 1040ST back in the day and it was great for the time. I learned me some C with the Mark Williams C, played around with bbs's and whatnot, but I'd be hard-pressed to find a reason to go back.<p>Of course we're all different, but I'd assume the real driver would be the ability to run specific beloved apps of yore.
I just would like to celebrate this sentence for one second:<p>> If It Can Be Done with Code, Don’t Do It with Hardware<p>We all complain about why my washing machine needs a connection to Wifi and why my brakes don’t work while I’m tuning the heating on the display (joking to emphasize the craziness of plugging the infotainment on the CAN bus), but our hardware is now so reliable that it’s more reliable to do something in software and reuse existing HW bricks, than to design a specific circuit for a dedicated function.
> Be Prepared to Lose All Your Money<p>In Taipei we have Fablab which has a CNC machine, laser cutter, multiple 3d printers, oscilloscope, and soldering irons, among a thousand other little bits and bobs. I'm guessing most cities have similar, and I've heard of phenomenal libraries with tools like this. It could be worth looking into this! Universities often have all the equipment you need as well.
Having also taken this journey, the one thing I wish I'd understood much earlier is how important familiarity with CAD tools was going to be. Not just PCB layouts but everything from enclosure design to product mock-ups. You need to get comfortable with at least the basics of both additive (3D printing) and subtractive (CNC milling) processes.
One note on "If It Can Be Done with Code, Don’t Do It with Hardware" - there are times where locking things down in hardware is worth it. Things like safety and compliance for example - it is much easier to prove a hardware design is "safe" and fault tolerant than software.
The point about "not doing something in hardware if can be done in software", is although mostly true, is less so when one takes FPGA into consideration, where the difference between hard in soft is blurred.