This has been my experience too on the limited number of embedded projects I've done. I once had an intermittent issue with the device locking up when going into sleep mode that took me 60 hours to get to the exact cause, which was in the CPLD, where isuues with a similar level of complexity I'd usually be able to pin down in a single day in my expertise area of server software.
Also, recently having received an Arduino project to work on, it was a bit of a garden path to get to the point where I could get it running under GDB.
Now I make sure I always have two working pieces of hardware, and I verify the hardware functionality to the extent possible before trying to implement software features on top of it.
Also, recently having received an Arduino project to work on, it was a bit of a garden path to get to the point where I could get it running under GDB.
Now I make sure I always have two working pieces of hardware, and I verify the hardware functionality to the extent possible before trying to implement software features on top of it.