Ask HN: How to switch to embedded software development mid-career?
Ever since switching to services, I've been disillusioned with the field. I don't like messing with AWS, hate dealing with Kubernetes and the ecosystem around it, and I just feel like the field as a whole produces sloppy code.
I feel constantly anxious about having to learn new stacks often, usually having little time to do so. I can't master anything. I fail to see how all the stuff that pops up moves things in a better direction. It feels more like randomization than improvement.
Over the years, I've caught little anecdotes about embedded software development, in particular mission critical software. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to be a more rigorous field when it comes to writing software that works and is verifiably correct. I also like the idea of writing code that runs on a single machine, as opposed to e.g. a Kubernetes cluster.
For example, someone wrote this here on HN:
> The embedded world is very slow to change, so you can read about "modern approaches" (i.e. approaches used today) in any book about embedded programming written in the last 30 years.
> I currently work on spacecraft flight software and the only real advance on this project over something like the space shuttle that I can point to is that we're trying out some continuous integration on this project. We would like to use a lot of modern C++ features, but the compiler for our flight hardware platform is GCC 4.1 (upgrading to GCC 4.3 soon if we're lucky).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22391560
That sounds like a dream to me. To be able to focus my expertise on one thing (or one set of things) and apply that throughout my career.
Is it possible for someone at my career stage to switch into embedded software development? Has anyone here done that?