oneofthose

For engineers at companies like SpaceX or Rocket Labs, a rocket launch is an emotional event where, within just a few minutes, the work of many months or years is rewarded (if the rocket works). What is an equivalent in your field of work/field of engineering?

For a chip designer I could imagine it is the first chip being shipped from the fab for testing. For a civil engineer maybe the completion of a bridge? For a software engineer the launch of an app/a product? For an AI engineer evaluating the capabilities or a newly trained model?

How do folks develop PCBs, firmware, host-software, maybe even ASICs and track versions of each? Can these various components be effectively tracked in a single repository? Specifically:

The timelines for design cycles vary greatly – it can range from mere minutes for host software changes, builds, and tests, to hours for FPGA synthesis, and days to weeks for PCBs. ASIC development can span months to years.

Artifacts: in software we have mostly text (we can diff), we can build quickly or cache builds or run incremental builds; none of that works in the physical world. Is it advisable to check in a mechanical or electrical engineering design project into a git repository?

What do folks do, what is your experience, what works, what does not?