I am of the opinion that the degree that someone pursues and completes is not as important as the knowledge one aquires with experience and working on ones own. An evening of serious investigation is more beneficial than a month of most classes in a typical university.

Obviously, the more one knows the better. If you are a master at both hardware and software you'll do great. If your forte is software, you'll do well working with companies that develop their own hardware and outsource the software development. If all you know is hardware, the reverse may be true.

That being said, I think a certain amount of knowledge of both hardware and software is necessary to be effective. If you don't understand the hardware it's going to be awfully hard to write effective code that you truly understand (i.e., you'll end up using other peoples libraries without understanding them). If you don't have an idea of how the code is going to be implemented, it's difficult to design good hardware that can be subsequently utilized efficiently by the software.

My comment would be that you define what you find most interesting: Hardware or software. Focus on that, but don't ignore the other. And if you can do both, more power to you.

Craig Steiner