I admit it… my attention has wandered from electronics since I retired almost a decade ago… you can follow the link to Wood Islands Prints if you want to see where my attention has gone. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the small but steady number of purchases of my C and the 8051 book that have continued despite the older version being (illegally) available on line and, I understand, a scanned version of the current edition as well. If you are economically challenged you have my blessing to go that way even though producing a paper copy must cost about as much as buying the official, nicely-bound book.

But I digress. I am starting to wonder what has been happening in the embedded microcontroller field lately. Have very high levels of integration made efficiency obsolete? Are high-end processors driving out the ‘ancient’ 4-bit processors? Has assembly language and C been replaced by very high-level languages in the field? Has surface-mount made most discrete electronics obsolete? These are the questions that plague me… on those rare occasions when my attention comes here.

So, what I am hoping is that some of you…from the at-least 10 visits a day, there must be someone listening… will come forward to offer guest posts on what has happened and where you think the embedded control field is going. I will be happy to edit whatever you provide if writing is not your strong suite, and surely give you full credit. If you are interested, contact my via email at schultz@pei.sympatico.ca