Why do we program?

We are not going to dwell on the deeper philosophical issues surrounding such a question. (I think we are here to write programs...) Instead we want to consider the reasons why we program computers in general, and embedded controllers like PICmicros in particular.

You are probably used to using programs, from word processors to games. Now we are going to consider how we create them and make them do what we want. There is nothing special (or even particularly sad) about people who write programs. A good programmer is first and foremost able to figure out the nature of a problem and then design, implement and test a system which solves it.

If this makes programmers seem boring, it is because big chunks of programming are a bit boring. However, I like to think that the joy of solving a problem (especially if you get paid for it!) more than compensates for a bit of boredom!