> What do you think of those? In your opinion, what skills are essential for 
> embedded developers? What sets them apart from desktop app programmers?
>   
I guess it depends what you mean by embedded programmers and what you 
mean by desktop programmers.

A lot of desktop programming, especially for internal use is done in 
languages like java, vb, the .net familily etc. Theese allow crappy 
programmers to turn out code that is just about acceptable but tend to 
result in apps that are slow and bloated.

In the embedded world we don't generally have that luxury, traditional 
languages like C and C++ with predictable (and generally quite good) 
performance but few safegaurds against programmer stupidity are used. 
Sometimes it is also basterdised versions of those languages. For 
example symbian C++ lacks exceptions replacing them with something 
lighter but more dangerous called leaves. PIC C has seperate rom and ram 
pointers and size/speed constraints mean that things like sprintf are 
generally avoided.

Depending on the particular embedded application they may also have to 
understand hardware, interrupts etc. Something that desktop developers 
are pretty isolated from. They may need to know assembler and how to 
read device datasheets.  how to work with buggy compilers and many other 
things.


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