$ whoami

Hi, I’m Alex.

By day I’m a Systems Test Automation Engineer working my way toward embedded software development. Long term, I’d like to grow into an Embedded Systems Architect. That path, and what I’m learning along the way, is what this site is about.

I’m deliberately moving closer to the hardware: firmware, bare metal, the layers most software engineers don’t need to think about. Eventually I want to be contributing to system design and architecture decisions, but right now I’m focused on building the foundation to get there.

What I actually care about

• Embedded systems and firmware: what runs before your OS even wakes up
• Hardware interfaces: SPI, I2C, UART, the protocols nobody talks about until they break
• Real-time systems and the brutal constraints that come with them
• OS internals: schedulers, memory models, the whole iceberg below the surface
• Low-level programming in C, C++, Rust, and enough assembly to know what’s really going on

How I think about learning

I don’t want the simplified answer. I want to know why the decision was made, what trade-offs were accepted, and what breaks if you get it wrong. Give me the mental model, not just the recipe.

So I write about what I’m learning: the concepts, the failures, the moments where something finally clicked. If that sounds useful, start with the blog or browse the projects.