life and mistakes

Hi guys,
I'm new here and I came here to get some suggestions. I made mistakes in my life and I want to try to correct them.
I'm 27 yeras old and I'm going to get a M.Sc. degree in engineering on december (energy/industrial/power production/hvac systems) but... I like computers.

Story:
* as child I fell in love with computers since I saw one. My parents, with a lot of effort, gave me a 286 when the technology standards were 486. No compilers, no books, I didn't know what was programming. Only my grandparent gave me a book on DOS commands :D obviously batch was not included.
* as teen (14 y.o.). In my country there are technical high schools: first two years are common, next three years students must choose a track programme. I choose automation and electrotechnic instead of informatics. Shame on me.
* as teen (19 y.o.). As an idiot, I heard many opinions that eletronics and informatics were dead in the 90s and the energy is the future. So I enrolled in energy engineering without feeling myself... since nowadays.

Now I'm frustrated. I never learnt how to program, I never learnt how to design an electronic circuit. And I'll probably get a job that will not give me enthusiasm and satisfaction.
I can only blame myself, of course.

I'm interested in low-level programming and electronic circuit design. I do not like at all web programming and related stuff. I'm not able to do anything of these subjects but, when I hear these topics, I feel that I like them!
So I came here, through google, to ask you some suggestions. What can I do? A bachelor in electronics? home-made study for self-projects?
Probably these are a no-way out questions and my problems came from my deep unconscious...
Sorry for my english, be patient.
Thanks

If you just want to learn basic electronics for the sake of curiosity, it's definitely possible to learn things yourself. There are a lot of awesome resources online. If you are interested, I can link you some.

However, if your goal is to be employed in a circuit design or firmware development job, it's probably not realistic. Many people go through a bachelor's degree in EE (which is fairly difficult compared to most other degrees) and still can't find a job. It's something that's extremely hard to self-learn compared to something like programming.

If your goal is to get employed in the electronics design / firmware industry, your best bet is probably to get a bachelor's degree. Since you already have a related degree, I'd guess you can skip a lot of the courses, but there would still be a lot more to learn. It's definitely not easy, but very rewarding if you are actually interested in it (like I am), and there are definitely no shortage of jobs if you are talented. Companies actually FIGHT for talented electrical engineers because they are hard to come by.

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Originally Posted by loopingthoughts

I'm interested in low-level programming and electronic circuit design.

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Me too. I've been teaching myself C since July this year, and have recently started reading electronics books from the library. I would like to eventually be able to design and program(in C) embedded circuits. There are some fun gadgets that I would like to create, for my own use, and maybe even patent and sell.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cfanatic

Me too. I've been teaching myself C since July this year, and have recently started reading electronics books from the library. I would like to eventually be able to design and program(in C) embedded circuits. There are some fun gadgets that I would like to create, for my own use, and maybe even patent and sell.

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If you come up with something clever do not forget to let us know :D

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Originally Posted by std10093

If you come up with something clever do not forget to let us know :D

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You will be the first on C board to know. :D

Hi!

I got a BSEE and MSEE, and then decided that engineering straight up was not for me so I got into computational linguistics at the doctorate level. You can _always_ change fields and your knowledge and breadth will always grow. Being of a particular degree does not necessarily need to lock you into a given career though it may help you be more flexible within it. What a good engineering program teaches you is how to learn and think like an engineer, and with a solid foundation in mathematics and physics you can dabble in related engineering fields. Knowledge is cumulative and don't let your degree constrain your opportunities.

-da

OP, I think that there are a lot of regrets in your life that is keeping you dissatisfied.

27 is not really that old for a change in career or education. I knew a baker who went back to school as a mature-aged student when he was 27, got into a dentistry degree at a university, and is now a rich and successful dentist.

A wise man by the name of Eckhart Tolle once said:

"If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences."

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Originally Posted by loopingthoughts

I'm interested in low-level programming and electronic circuit design

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get a Raspberry Pi or an arduino and start writing code. there's literally no end to what you can do with those things.

With an engineering degree, it'd be very easy for you to get a job as a control systems engineer and program PLCs. My degree is in mechanical engineer and that's what I did. I am my company's only PLC programmer now. While ladder logic isn't exactly low-level, it can be sometimes. Some weaker PLCs can't do higher level math operations so you have to do things in a process like you would in assembly. I have to program a Fisher ROC for a job in Australia this spring and I have to create function sequence tables to do a lot of the control scheme. It's very much like assembly.