Even in elementary school I couldn’t wait to get on and study something really practical. So it was clear that grammar school wasn’t for me and I enrolled to study electrotechnic engineering. For me, therefore, the choice of university was simple. Also, as a born-and-bred “Pragian”, I didn’t even consider universities in other towns, and I joined the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at CVUT. My middle school training gave me a good foundation and a penchant for programming microcontrollers, digital circuit design and general development on the border between software and hardware. My specialization in embedded programming ran like a thread through my studies at FEL the Department of Control Engineering.
When choosing a bachelor course I hit on the topic that would definitively direct me towards my future career as an embedded software developer. I have developed my first major embedded device and learned to program in C. In addition, my work was part of a larger project for a commercial company, which allowed me to leave my temporary position as a software tester at another firm and fully engage in the development of platforms for Hardware-in-the- Loop (HIL) testing in this project.
I held onto this successful cooperation during my Master's degree, and in my thesis, I integrated the entire solution into Matlab Simulink with the support of direct code generation. Due to my lack of knowledge of mathematics and physics it was already clear that I wouldn’t make a living as a theoretician, but the practical experience gained working on this project significantly helped my future career. I learned how to be a good programmer, to write documentation that has rhyme and reason, and also how to keep to given deadlines.
I got the position of embedded programmer through a detour into the Siemens Development Center in Stodůlky in Prague, where I still work today. Although my career has begun to take a more managerial path and I rarely come into contact with code these days, I still am involved in the design of embedded systems solutions and product definition in the field of industrial automation.
Lukáš Hamáček