@gideon I agree, programming IS like stamp collecting. it's fun, but useless without the letters you put them on to get them places! No point in collecting epic programs if you cannot make them do exciting things - EE makes that possible for programmers to touch and change the world they live in!

@gideon I suggest you look at the designs of Arduino, however shit they might be, and learn how to make your own 8-bit AVR prototyping board. You will need to read the many hundreds of pages of the user manual, and circuit design application notes, and make use of Sparkfun and Arduino open source schematics to get things done..

I have used the Atmel products a lot, and made many designs with them without issues - but it's a huge learning process, and I can say after consistent effort (uni + employment) over 2 years I am now pretty confident in a lot of what I do

The issue with EE, is there are always better ways to do it, and you can sometimes get blinkered eyes. There are EE Gods out there, with ridiculous amounts of experience in all areas, some you've never heard about. You need to tap into that whenever you can, that is what makes EE.SE so useful as well.