Question of the Month: What’s the most frustrating part of working with modern micro-controllers?

My answer to this one is a bit complex.  There are many factors effecting my processor choices. Through the years I have been in a position to select processors for a wide variety of products over a wide variety of fields.  I have worked in the development of electronics and software for military, consumer, medical, security, avionics and several other fields.  Each of these fields stress unique selection criteria for these processors.  I have selected processors of widely different classes, including RISC, DSP and small, medium and large microcontrollers.  Here are a few of the issues that I have faced in selecting and working with processors.

1. Poor or inconsistent documentation - Many of the most difficult issues were based on the quality of the available documents. I have had issues with overly complex, missing or incorrect or a total lack of documentation.
2. Proprietary toolchains and IDES - This to has been a difficult area to deal with for me. There have been cases when the necessary tools were so expensive that we were forced to move to a different processor or make do with poor tools and difficult development and debug processes.
3. Supply chain issues / availability - This has been a more recent issue for me lately, and not just due to the Covid problems. Some vendors have had issues were a processor just pain is not available as they change their fabrication processes or plants.  In recent years the former Atmel part, Atmega328PB processor was not available due to issues with MicroChip processes or priorities.  I needed to acquire processors for other than normal vendors, including some vendors of old or excess stock.  As scary as that was for me, in the end it all worked out.
4. Not enough functionality - There have been times when a processor became overwhelmed by ever increasing requirements, due to software updates and added features. I tend to be a bit of a snob in this area, taking the standpoint that there are no bad processors, just bad programmers.  I have taken many underperforming processors and brought them back into compliance by optimizing the code and fixing bottlenecks or poor programming practices.
5. Configuration complexity - This is area that continues to make it difficult to adopt some newer processors into some of my designs. There have been processors that are so complex, that I am not able to fully understand a path forward with them.  Some of this just might be my own issues with "way too many choices" and poor documentation or tools don't that allow for a quick and simple setup, which could then be later changed as needed to take advantage of some of the more complex features.

Given these issues, and many others, I have chosen to stay behind the bleeding edge of new processors.  I also have chosen to work almost exclusively within the offerings of single vendor.  I find that I can share code and hardware designs across a large variety of projects, by using a single processor vendor.

I currently have several active designs based on MicroChip's AtMega and AtTiny parts.  I used the AtMega328PB chip in most of designs and the AtTiny (either 16xx or 32xx parts) as co-processors or standalone processors in some of my smaller designs (either boards smaller than 1 sq in or in designs that are not that complex).

My answer to this one is a bit complex.  There are many factors effecting my processor choices. Through the years I have been in a position to select processors for a wide variety of products over a wide variety of fields.  I have worked in the development of electronics and software for military, consumer, medical, security, avionics and several other fields.  Each of these fields stress unique selection criteria for these processors.  I have selected processors of widely different classes, including RISC, DSP and small, medium and large microcontrollers.  Here are a few of the issues that I have faced in selecting and working with processors.

1. Poor or inconsistent documentation - Many of the most difficult issues were based on the quality of the available documents. I have had issues with overly complex, missing or incorrect or a total lack of documentation.
2. Proprietary toolchains and IDES - This to has been a difficult area to deal with for me. There have been cases when the necessary tools were so expensive that we were forced to move to a different processor or make do with poor tools and difficult development and debug processes.
3. Supply chain issues / availability - This has been a more recent issue for me lately, and not just due to the Covid problems. Some vendors have had issues were a processor just pain is not available as they change their fabrication processes or plants.  In recent years the former Atmel part, Atmega328PB processor was not available due to issues with MicroChip processes or priorities.  I needed to acquire processors for other than normal vendors, including some vendors of old or excess stock.  As scary as that was for me, in the end it all worked out.
4. Not enough functionality - There have been times when a processor became overwhelmed by ever increasing requirements, due to software updates and added features. I tend to be a bit of a snob in this area, taking the standpoint that there are no bad processors, just bad programmers.  I have taken many underperforming processors and brought them back into compliance by optimizing the code and fixing bottlenecks or poor programming practices.
5. Configuration complexity - This is area that continues to make it difficult to adopt some newer processors into some of my designs. There have been processors that are so complex, that I am not able to fully understand a path forward with them.  Some of this just might be my own issues with "way too many choices" and poor documentation or tools don't that allow for a quick and simple setup, which could then be later changed as needed to take advantage of some of the more complex features.

Given these issues, and many others, I have chosen to stay behind the bleeding edge of new processors.  I also have chosen to work almost exclusively within the offerings of single vendor.  I find that I can share code and hardware designs across a large variety of projects, by using a single processor vendor.

I currently have several active designs based on MicroChip's AtMega and AtTiny parts.  I used the AtMega328PB chip in most of designs and the AtTiny (either 16xx or 32xx parts) as co-processors or standalone processors in some of my smaller designs (either boards smaller than 1 sq in or in designs that are not that complex).