Hi,
My question certainly stems from the imposter syndrome that I am living right now for no good reason, but when looking to resolve some issues for embedded C problems, I come across a lot of post from people that have a deep understanding of the language and how a mcu works at machine code level.
When I read these posts, I do understand what the author is saying, but it really makes me feel like I should know more about what’s happening under the hood.
So my question is this : how do you rate yourself in your most used language? Do you understand the subtilities and the nuance of your language?
I know this doesn’t necessarily makes me a bad firmware dev, but damn does it makes me feel like it when I read these posts.
I get that this is a subjective question without any good responses, but I’d be interested in hearing about different experiences in the hope of reducing my imposter syndrome.
Thanks
Being proficient isn’t about getting something right the first time, it’s about how easily you recognize something as wrong and knowing how to get the knowledge to fix it. Under that definition I rate myself 5/5 if I’m not trying to be humble or sorry about tiny details.
If you step in enough shit you eventually learn to realise when you are about to step in it again. I think the most knowledgeable people are those that have failed the most and found something helpful along the way, seems you are well on your journey so just keep steeping. At some point the abstractions you have control over become unreliable until you understand how they interact with lower level systems and the balance of control comes back because you know know the circumstances in which these abstractions work in your favour.
With about 12 years in my primary language I’d say my expertise is expressed in knowing exactly what to Google…
This is probably the true highest level of expertise you’ll get out of most professional coders.
It takes a real monk level of confinement to understanding the language to break out of being proficient in looking shit up and start being proficient in being the person that writes the shit people are looking up.
The more I learn about my language the less I think it matters. Maybe in embedded C you can’t just leave everything to the compiler though.
Not every thing, but still most things by far.
It’s a strong typed language with a minimal set of guard rails, so there is certainly some considerations to take into account, but the compiler are pretty good and give more leeway to the dev.
Better than many, mediocre.
With my coworkers I’ve got a strange ability to pick up any language that tastes like c, and get stuff done. I’m sure I’ve confused our c# guys when I make a change to their code and ask for a code review, because I’ll chase down quality of life improvements for myself. (Generally, I will make the change and ask if I have any unintended side effects, because in an MCU, I know what all my side effects are, multi threaded application?, not at all)
Edit: coming from a firmware view, I’ve made enough mistakes to realize when order of operations will stab me, when a branch is bad because that pipeline hit will hurt, and I still get & vs && wrong more often than I would like to admit.
I just have to say “tastes like c” is a visceral way to say it. I approve.
I think I’ll never not make & &&, | || or = == operators mistakes. It’s so easy to go over it fast and not notice the mistakes.
I like developing MCU firmwares because there is limited amout of resources and you usually have direct control of what is running when.
I feel the better than many, but mediocre in my soul. I mean, I get paid to code, so I certainly have a good enough knowledge to do so. But I have the tendancy to undersell myself.
Knowing the footguns in your language is always useful. The more you know, the less you’ll shoot your foot.
I think that one of my issue is that I’d like to be more knowledgeable to the smaller bits and bytes of C, but I don’t have the time at work to go deeper and I don’t have any free time because I have young kids.
I don’t know about your workplace, but if at all possible I would try to find time between tasks to spend on learning. If your company doesn’t have a policy where it is clear that employees have the freedom to learn during company time, try to underestimate your own velocity even more and use the time it leaves for learning.
About 10 years ago I worked for a company where I was performing quite well. Since that meant I finished my tasks early, I could have taken on even more tasks. But I didn’t really tell our scrum master when I finished early. Instead I spent the time learning, and also refactoring code to help me become more productive. This added up, and my efficiency only increased more, until at some point I only needed one or two days to complete a week’s sprint. I didn’t waste my time, but I used it to pick up more architectural stuff on the side, while always learning on the job.
I’ll admit that when I started this route, I already had a bunch of experience under my belt, and this may not be feasible if you have managers breathing down your neck all the time. But the point is, if you play it smart you can use company time to improve yourself and they may even appreciate you for it.
I work in a startup, so I’d say that almost every day, I learn something new. So I don’t really need to look in-between tasks because a lot of tasks bring new challenges.
When I worked in corpos, my job was restricted to the same tasks and specific knowledge. Now it’s the opposite where I need to learn what I need to create a feature or fix an issue.
I guess that lately, a lot of new things have popped up and I need to absorb a lot of information to implement the features I need. And that is probably what is triggering the imposter syndrome.
Thanks for the insight, it is appreciated.
There’s a lot to talk about from this point alone, but I’ll be brief: having gone through university courses on processor design and cutting my teeth on fighting people for a single bit in memory, I’m probably a lot more comfortable with that minutia than most; having written my first few lines of C in 10 years to demo a basic memory safety bug just an hour ago, you’re way way ahead of me.
There are different ways to learn and gain experience and each path will train us in different skills. Then we build teams around that diversity.
Thanks for the insight. I guess one thing that causes my imposter syndrome is that I want to know how everything works in details.
I agree that for other people, what I know seems like magic to them. It’s easy to look at what we don’t know, but we don’t take the time to appreciate how far we’ve come. We should do that more often.
I don’t have any free time because I have young kids.
That’s a healthy thing to acknowledge.
It’s a brutal phase for professional development, hobbies, free time, sex, basic housekeeping…
It gets better as the little ones grow.
At least, we know emotionally that it will get better with the second one haha, even if the day to day is rought.
With the first one, it felt like we would never get to the other side of it. But we did and we will for the second one.
I am eager to learn new things, so having so little free time is definitely tough. And the lack of sleep/energy makes it even harder.
Thanks for the encouragement, it’s nice to be acknowledged by someone else that went through the same thing. We often forget that we are not alone and a lot of people got through it before us.
how do you rate yourself in your most used language?
I know things that no human should have to carry the knowledge of
Do you understand the subtilities and the nuance of your language?
My soul is scarred by the nuanced minutia of many an RFC.
in the hope of reducing my imposter syndrome.
There’s but two types in software - those who have lived to see too much…and those who haven’t…yet.
I got pretty good with BASIC back in 1983.
Nice!
I’m still struggling to get good at BASIC, myself.
BASIC was my first language, and I still don’t feel like I’ve mastered it, so I still study it on some weekends.
I take so many modern tools for granted, now. It makes my learning progress in BASIC feel slow.
But I’m getting better at it.
I’ve learned a lot by breaking things. By making mistakes and watching other people make mistakes. I’ve writing some blog posts that make me look real smart.
But mostly just bang code together until it works. Run tests and perf stuff until it looks good. It’s time. I have the time to write it up. And check back on what was really happening.
But I still mostly learn by suffering.
But I still mostly learn by suffering.
That resonates so much. Almost every time someone is deeply impressed with something I know, it brings back a painful memory of how I learned it.
I really like brain twisters. It can get frustrating at times, but it’s the most fun out of the profession to me.
In C in particular, you have to be very cognizant of the tricky ways the language can screw you with UB. You might want to try some verification tools like Frama-C, use UB sanitizers, enable all the compiler warnings and traps that you can, etc. Other than that, I think using too many obscure features of a language is an antipattern. Just stick with the idioms that you see in other code. Take reviewer comments on board, and write lots of code so you come to feel fluent.
Added: the MISRA C guidelines for embedded C tell you to stay with a relatively safe subset of the language. They are mostly wise, so you might want to use them.
Added: is your issue with C or with machine code? If you’re programming small MCUs, then yes, you should develop some familiarity with machine code and hardware level programming. That may also help you get more comfortable with C.
My issue is with the imposter syndrome i’d say.
I don’t know asm on the tip of the fingers because today’s mcu are pretty full of features that makes it not useful most of the time, but if I need to whip up something in asm for whatever reason, I know the basics and how to search for documentation to help me.
I try to follow MISRA C guidelines because it’s pretty easy to follow and it gives tool to reduce mistakes.
I have enough experience to avoid many common pitfalls such as overflows, but for whatever reason, it always feel like I don’t know enough when I come across a tutorial or a post with a deep dive in a specific part of an embedded project or on the C language.
When I read these tutorials/posts, I understand what is being done, but I could not come to these conclusions myself, if that makes sense.
What are you working on and what kind of organization? Are you working with someone more senior? You could ask him or her for an assessment of where you should work on strengthening up.
You are in the right mindset if you are worried. Many C programmers greatly overestimate their ability to write bug-free or even valid (UB-free) code.
The AVR MCUs are pretty simple compared with 32 bit MCUs, so are good for asm coding.
Otherwise it’s a matter of coding til it’s reflexive.
Philip Koopman has written a book on MCU programming that sounds good. I haven’t seen it yet but someday. You might look for it: https://betterembsw.blogspot.com/2021/02/better-embedded-system-software-e-book.html?m=1
John Regehr’s blog is also good.
Thanks for your input.
I think I would like to follow all these people and their work on C, and their in depth knowledge. But free time is sparse, and I don’t have the mental energy when I do have some time.
As for my work, I work in a startup where I am the only one doing what I do. However, I have a lot of leeway in how I code, so I am always somewhat read on best practices. So I can’t really refer to a senior dev, but I can self-teach.
I think I coded enough that a lot of what I do is a reflex, and I often can approximate a first solution,but I have doubts all the time on how I implement new features. That makes it so that I am a slower coder and I really struggle to do fast prototyping.
I am aware enough of what I do well, and what I struggle, so there’s that.
Fair enough. If your product isn’t safety or security critical then it’s mostly a matter of getting it working and passing reasonable testing. If it’s critical you might look for outside help or review, and maybe revisit the decision to use C.
The book “Analysable Real-Time Systems: Programmed in Ada” was recommended to me and looks good. I have a copy that has been on my reading pile for ages. I was just thinking about it recently. It could be a source of wisdom about embedded dev in general, plus Ada generally fosters a more serious approach than C does, so it could be worth a look. I also plan to get Koopman’s book that I mentioned earlier.
Yeah, but they make me MISRAble.
A one out of ten. I consider myself the world’s second worst programmer.
Imposter syndrome is strong
By any chance, do you use a niche language that has only two programmers?
Nope. I’m just that bad. I feel like I have a logical mind but it just seems like the command don’t do what I think they will, won’t operate on a certain type of variable or Holy crap I forgot a friggin space or semi-colon or something.
Languages in order of proficiency: C++ HTML/CSS Matlab Basic Fortran (1 class taken)
But when I say proficient I seriously mean looking stuff up on the internet for every single line. And I haven’t used Basic in decades.
Who is the first?
The guy who was using my name to make code submissions 2-3 years prior.
Odds are the worst one is still using Twitter.
You mean the worst? I don’t know. I’m just hopeful that I’m not actually the worst. Fingers crossed.
A solid 5.
I’m happy with it too. They still pay me so I must be doing something right. Almost two decades now.
5 years professionally and I can find jobs, so yeah I must do something decent. But that imposter syndrome is strong these las weeks
I’ve been using c# since .net 2 which came out around the turn of the century (lol)
I’d happily call myself an expert. I can do anything I need to and easily dive into the standard library source code or even IL when needed.
But even then there are topics I could easily learn more on particularly the very performance focused struct features and intrinsics.
I’ve found LLMs to be super useful when you have a very specific question about a feature. I use bing ai at work so it sources all its answers and you can dive into the articles for more detail.
Programming is a never ending learning journey and you just have to keep going. When you get something you don’t fully understand to a deep dive there are always resources for everything.
I’d say average.
In every project and in every team, I end up being strong because I fix the hard stuff. I debug better and I deliver mostly bug free code. My code is more efficient and performant than my coworkers most of the time.
That’s gotta count for something.
Imposter syndrome is good for me. Keeps me learning.
Even the creators of languages don’t know their own languages 100%. I wouldn’t even call them the limit. So, I’m good enough in my main language that a lot of code doesn’t surprise me. And I try very hard to write code that others can understand as well when in a team.
