As an embedded engineer, I sometimes wish there were certain resources available at hand, instead of relying on poor search results or obtuse documentation. Digging through datasheets and specifications can be extremely time consuming, and even repetitive because I can’t remember how so many devices work. The internet is getting worse, so search results are getting worse. And more websites are SEO so the same old tricks will no longer bring the cream to the top of the bucket. Until efforts such as LLM search / summarize services, and/or Google goes the way of the dinosaur due to disruption from competitors, a simple solution is for humans to help themselves in a walled garden. I like walled gardens, at work I tend to want to protect my tools, equipment, and desk space because then I know where to find what I need to solve problems. And then I don’t have to waste time searching or learning for things which can be at hand. So I think I need to setup a discourse for embedded engineers at these co-ordinates. Device support itself should be limited and curated, I think, based on the huge success of RPI and Arduino ecosystems. In the end it’s all about usability and time to market, aka short development cycles.
Another issue is the verification space of embedded engineering, which is arguably the more important half of development. Until something is verified, don’t trust that it works. And unless verification is run regularly to gain regression, don’t trust changes! To put it bluntly, FPGA tools suck. I’ve used several different vendors and they are all kludge level clones. It would be so much better to have a build system I can understand. This lends itself naturally to the walled garden. A set of devices with forum support, good tools, quick answers to easy questions, and thoughtful verification hooks. So many teams must be repeating the same stuff over and over, and I would doom myself to repeat the same stuff over and over… unless I can take ownership of the problem myself and carve out a corner of sanity from the sea of errata and recipe based designs.
I don’t want to see embedded engineering go the same way as software, which I think has gotten worse at everything by trying to do everything and be everything. Just look at operating systems, the web stack, browsers… at the root is unfettered, unregulated, predatory corporations that resemble cancer more than anything else.. but that’s a separate conversation. /rant
Serial Engineering 