
Ask HN: Possible to transition from application development to embedded systems? - neuroticfish
I&#x27;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&#x27;t afford to go back to school for a masters to focus on something that&#x27;s really interesting to me (ocean related stuff) and I&#x27;m dreadfully bored with high-level programming and the culture of application development.  I&#x27;m interested in making a career change to embedded software engineering but not sure how to make the transition.<p>- What sort of learning resources are best for picking up embedded systems?<p>- How dramatic of a pay cut would I be taking to jump into the field?<p>- Is it realistic at this stage in my career to make this transition at all?
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deanfranks
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.

