My Project Is Doomed. What Now?
Embedded projects can be wonderfully complex. High-speed electronics, kernels, drivers, protocols, deadlines… sometimes it all plays together like a symphony. And sometimes… it doesn’t.
If you’ve ever looked at your codebase, your hardware schematic, or your project schedule and thought “this is doomed”, you’re not alone. But fear not: where there’s life, there’s hope. Here are two very different but complementary ways to recover a desperate case.
1. Invoke the Heavens
When all else fails, some people reboot their PC. Others reboot their faith.
For centuries, desperate souls have turned upward in search of help. One of the most famous addresses in this celestial support line is Saint Rita of Cascia, often called the patron saint of impossible causes. Born in 1381 in Italy, she endured a life full of hardship, and instead of giving up, she chose reconciliation and service. In 1900, she was canonized, forever earning her reputation as a go-to helper when everything seems lost.
Now, whether you’re a believer or not, there’s something oddly comforting about knowing there’s a “helpdesk in the sky” dedicated to impossible cases. And honestly, if your embedded project already feels like it runs on duct tape and divine intervention, adding an actual prayer can’t make things worse. At the very least, it may give you a moment of calm before diving back into your debugger.
2. And/Or Call an Expert
Of course, not everyone is comfortable outsourcing their project recovery to higher powers. If you’d rather keep your feet on the ground, there’s another option: call an expert.
At Embedded Expertise, we’ve been called into projects that looked like lost causes:
- 1,000+ CVEs show up one week before delivery;
- The hardware is so slow the only way out is to adjust the Boltzmann constant;
- Meeting the schedule requires bending the flow of time (and common sense).
- And more…
Unlike divine intervention, our approach is more predictable: hard-won experience, systematic debugging, and a knack for spotting what others overlook.
Sometimes, all it takes is someone outside the chaos to calmly say: “Here’s the problem, here’s the fix, and here’s how we’ll get you back on track.” No incense required.
If you’d like to see more, take a look at our earlier post about why beating a dead horse won’t make it run
When your embedded project seems doomed, you really have two main options: look up, or look around. Invoking Saint Rita may bring comfort, courage, and perhaps even a miracle. Calling an expert, on the other hand, usually brings practical solutions, hard-earned experience, and a clear path forward.
Of course, these routes are not mutually exclusive. A little bit of spirituality and a lot of engineering know-how can coexist quite happily. And honestly, given the complexity of our jobs (and of life in general), a touch of both probably can’t hurt.
