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+# Winter 2025 Course Journal: EECS 461
+
+Course Title: Embedded Control Systems
+
+## Motivation
+
+I enrolled in this course because of two reason:
+
+- I checked the list of upper-level courses I must pick one from and this
+  is one of the only three options that don't mess up my schedule
+- Mark Brehob recommended it so it must be good
+
+The other two courses are EECS 491 (distributed systems) and 483
+(compilers). I have 491 in my backpack right now, but am thinking of
+dropping it because workload. It really hurts me to drop a course offered
+by one of my favorite professors. But compared to 461, it's less relevant
+to my career, so I need to let go if I have to. 483 is another matter.
+I doubt I have the math background.
+
+The funny thing is, each of these courses teaches a different language:
+
+- 461: C
+- 491: Go
+- 483: Rust
+
+I'm stuck with the worst of the worst, aren't I. :floofmug:
+
+## First lecture
+
+The professor is Jeffrey Cook. He carries a suitcase, which ranks him at
+2nd place on my "coolest thing to carry to lecture" leaderboard (1st place
+is Robert Dick with his Panasonic Toughbook).
+
+The course involves a haptic wheel (motorized steel wheel, ~10 cm in
+diameter), some NXP ARM MCU, C, MATLAB, Simulink, and Stateflow.
+
+Cook said in lecture that you can't declare variables in the middle of
+a block, only in the beginning. I was like, no way that's true, that must
+be an outdated version of C. I tried a counterexample on my gcc, and it
+worked all the way back to C99. He said, "well, at least it's like that on
+the lab compiler."
+
+It turns out the rule dates back to C89. Which means? I'll be working with
+C89 for the rest of the semester.
+
+:mosfet_grub:
+
+## First lab
+
+I hate that the first lab is about MMIO and GPIO, which means I have to
+relive 373. It's like having to beat a tedious game level that you already
+passed one year ago with 28 tries. I went from MMIO to `digitalWrite`, and
+now the rock is rolling down the hill. :floofmug: