I too took a roundabout route to working with 8052s.

I graduated with a degree in electrical and computer engineering, but aside from some FORTRAN programming and logic design, I really didn't learn about computers. At that time I wasn't interested in the microprocessors (8008) that my friends in school were so fond of.

Fresh out of school I got a job with the then #2 computer company, designing mainframe computer hardware. I started out in product support, that is fixing problems with someone else's designs. I recommend that approach, seeing what others did right (and wrong!) really influenced how I did my own designs.

Somewhere along the line, I decided my FORTRAN was getting dated, and to be different from my ALGOL and Pascal friends I started learning an unknown language called "C" ... lucky choice, huh?

After a layoff and a move I started working for a company that needed a technician to troubleshoot PC104-based engine monitoring systems. This foot-in-the-door was a good thing, as I shortly was moved into engineering to program a new 8052-based monitorning system, replacing a PC-only programmer with no hardware experience.

Since then (1997) I've worked with various 8052 derivatives, along with some PICs and AVRs. I do mostly software, and most of that in C (assembler as required).

Dennis