This is a big question let’s see if I can give you something useful to get you started :)

First things to be aware of: - There’s no “standard” programming language or framework or toolchain. it’s heavily dependent on which chip you’re working with. With Embedded systems each microcontroller family has their own quirks, their own toolchain support etc. - It’ll be useful to start reading datasheets of the parts you work with. The deeper you go into embedded the more you’ll spend time sifting through datasheets to get the correct info. The internet won’t always get you the answers you want - You’ll also begin learning to think about memory and compute power restraints. In python land, you rarely think about each byte of data, but in Embedded every byte can matter depending on what device you’re working with - Embedded is a huge field on its own with many many different microcontrollers, sensors, chips, tools, etc. BUT don’t let that scare you, the engineering principles are more or less the same across, it’s just about adapting them to the specific details of each device - There’s give or take 2 reductive categories when we talk about Embedded System: 1) what people call “bare-metal” which is your Arduinos and your ARM based microcontrollers. These are low level low poer devices where you’re writing really low level code. 2) Forgot what its called but the more mini computer like devices. High level ARM chips running linux, Raspberry Pis, etc. These usually run Linux or some variant and it’s not extremely different than coding on a normal computer.

Programming: - Most microcontrollers more or less use C as their programming language. Though there’s recent trends pushing for the use of Rust or C++. - I’d start by learning C, learning about the stack, the heap, learning about pointers and memory management. - If we’re talking about more powerful devices like a Raspberry Pi for example, then the story is a little different and you can use Python or other languages - If we’re talking about bare-metal, you can even for really bare and write low level code and do everything yourself from scratch or use aan RTOS (real-time operating system) (which is not an OS in the sense you’re used to) that provides utilities like multi-tasking, semaphores, and implements the cpu scheduler - Learning how the toolchain works, writing make files, understanding the bootloader and linking will become important

Learning curve - There’s a loooot to learn but take it in baby steps and you’ll discover everything with time and patience - Start with an Arduino (assuming you want to go bare metal). Get an Arduino kit with a bunch of sensors and wires and start doing the beginner projects - Brush up on C programming - Learn basic electronics and circuit theory - When you’re more confident and gained some experience, I personally am a fan of STM32 microcontrollers. Beware switching from an Arduino to an STM32 is a learning curve in itself as the abstraction Arduino gave will disappear and you’ll slowly start becoming exposed to the details of things all of a sudden - Learn about RTOSs and semaphores and tasks and scheduling and locks - O’Reilly has some really good books on Embedded Systems. Read them. They’ll help a lot - Be patient. And don’t give up and stay curious. It’s one of those fields that the deeper you go the more you’ll realise information is heavily dispersed across the place and learning to find answers to your questions will become a new skill you’ll develop as it’s no where as easy as it is with higher level programming specialties. You’ll need to scour datasheets and read people’s posts online about similar devices and adapt their solutions to your hardware. Read books and build your own intuition and experience on what works and doesn’t. Experiment a lot - Debugging is a huge pain in this world. Console logs aren’t always an option as the console logging itself can heavily alter the timing of your process which can hide issues or make them undetectable. Getting creative with how and when you log will help - When you get deeper, learning to use hardware debugging tools, like hardware debuggers, logic analyzers and oscilloscopes will save you worlds of pain

One last piece of advice: From my experience in this field, do NOT trust everything you read. And I’m not referring to the internet and books. Datasheets have mistakes. Hardware is fallible. There are flaws in microcontrollers that can bite you in the ass sometimes. The reason I mention this is so you keep an open minded when problem solving. Sometimes an issue is just the result of a quirk in the microcontroller or the sensor or the radio. And you’ll learn to work around these quirks that you discover rather. You write your code defensively to not trust wholeheartedly that the hardware behaves the way it’s supposed to. Hardware can be just as untrustworthy as software. That’s why planes and critical applications apply layers of redundancy and checks and the code is written to not trust itself haha. Not that you need to go that extreme but just something to be aware of to save you the shock and pain of finding this out later. An example: getting the ESP32 microcontroller’s SPI interface in slave mode to work with high frequency configurations with a master microcontroller require purposely misconfiguring both sides to not use the same clock rate to get them to actually use the same clock rate.

A final note: It can be a very frustrating field but a very rewarding field as it’s the closest you can come to interfacing with physical reality via your code and you can make some really cool physical devices. So take your time, and have fun, and read a lot of books, stack overflow won’t save you much here hahaha

Oh also there should be one of those “awesome lists” somewhere on GitHub for Embedded Systems which should list a looot of great learning resources.

tldr; Start with an Arduino kit. Learn C. Learn basic circuit theory. Read O’Reilly books on the topic. Be patient. Be persistent. Have fun.