BTW - I still remember my first two programs on the TRS-80 - the obligatory "hello world" program and a screen saver (sort of) that drew random patterns of lines on the screen using the graphics characters. The first time I ran it (the screen saver) I thought "WOW - I wrote that". I've been hooked ever since. It started out as a hobby and then I found out that people would actually PAY me to play with computers...life is good. I don't often write software "after hours" anymore but my love for computers has not subsided.

My actual first "embedded" job was in 1983 and was non-automotive. I did the firmware for a 6802 based dot-matrix printer which was used with a 6809 based cash-register used in the parking industry (I also worked on the cash-register software). Before that I wrote games for the TRS-80 (Z80 assembler and 6809 assembler) and business software (point of sale and inventory control in BASIC) My first automotive job (1985) was writing a high-speed fiber optic vehicle network protocol (1 megabit - very fast at the time) for a 68000 processor using the 1553 chip set. I've also written software for diagnostics tools used in dealerships (68hc11 and 68332 based), 68hc11 based automatic climate control systems (several versions), 68hc11 based air-bag controllers, 68030 based check sorter (used in the banking industry), mpc823 based voice recognition system (used to control other modules in the vehicle like radio, cd player, etc), NEC 78k0 based heated/cooled memory seat controller. I've worked at all of the (used to be) Big Three and several tier 1 suppliers. Mostly contract work (shortest was 6 months, longest was 7 years). I will be starting a new job in a bit developing end-of-line and in-circuit testers for use in manufacturing plants (mostly automotive). ( maybe I should have just posted my resume - it would have been faster ;) ) What area do you work in?

Stack and Heap???!!! Everything was in assembler 'back then". I didn't start using C (on the job anyway) until about 1989. These were eight bit micro-controllers (think Motorola 6800, 6802, 68hc11) with about 10k to 16k of ROM space with only about 1k - 2k of RAM to work with (sometimes less). We thought about memory usage in BITs not KBytes. The good 'ole days...what ever happened (OSes that take 2 gig or more of disk space...sigh) :-D

Now, now...be nice...us geezers can't afford to get too wound up...:zzz: And yes...the 'Flintstone' era computers were a little different (made of rocks and such).

Ditto :-D - I've been a software engineer since 1978 (embedded systems for the automotive industry) and can not think of anything else I would want to do. 'After' for me would be retirement (in ten years or so).