My entry into embedded systems like most other people started with an Arduino Uno. The UNO didn't have a hardware debugger on board so If I made a mistake, I had to place well-structured Serial.println statements throughout my code so that I could follow the logic and find out where things went wrong. Anyone who has done this enough times knows how frustrating it can be and I knew at the back of my mind that there definitely had to be a better way.

When I started programming STM32 microcontrollers, I got introduced to using a hardware debugger and the experience was surreal. The ability to step through my code line-by-line and see the values of registers and variables change in real-time made debugging a better experience. Most microcontroller platforms have some kind of hardware debugger that you can use. ESP32s have ESP-PROG, and STM32s have ST-LINK. If you have never tried using a hardware debugger before, I encourage you to treat yourself.

If you don't know where to get these programmers, you can read my previous article on how I source components in Ghana