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This question asks how to get started on learning about software development for avionics and ultimately making it a career. Although the question is fairly specific and the technical area is relatively well-defined, career questions in general have a number of common issues, which this meta.SE question describes well. I don't think we've had any meta discussion about them here yet.

In summary, in many cases they're subjective, lead to discussion and are useful only to the person who asked the question. On the other hand, the same meta post acknowledges that they're are often very popular, so obviously they do have value.

In fact, the few aviation careers questions so far can mostly be answered objectively because they're about costs and qualifications. Those seem like good, useful questions to have. But more open questions asking how to get into a certain career, which technical skills to learn or which references to use seem too subjective to me.

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I think important to consider who the audience is for this group. I think most of the people in Aviation are pilots, flying enthusiasts, some Sim/RC folks, and the general public which come along once in awhile and ask "hey, this happened to me... " or "this happened in a video/movie/book..."

So I don't think as a population, we necessarily have any unique career advice for people who want to be, say, baggage handlers, gate agents, ramp workers, flight attendants, or even avionics designers, even though some individuals in Aviation might be. But for those who want to be pilots, I think Aviation is a great place to ask.

That being said, I give you this tweet (in which I am mentioned).

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  • $\begingroup$ That's a good point about pilots vs. other aviation careers. I'd say pilots are actually a fairly simple case when it comes to career planning: I guess very few aspiring ATPs will ever have the luxury of asking "should I train to fly an Airbus or a Boeing?". $\endgroup$
    – Pondlife
    Commented Dec 4, 2014 at 20:33
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There is at least one major difference between trying to get a job as a computer programmer and trying to get a job as a pilot: the regulations involved. There are no requirements for coders to get, say 250 hours in functional programming (while pair coding with a licensed Haskell developer) before being allowed to write code on your own ;).

Because becoming a pilot involves such regulations, there is a far clearer path to becoming a pilot than there is to becoming a coder. And, also as a result of the regulations, there are a lot more technical questions about requirements for pilots who are on that path. As a result, I think questions involved in becoming a commercial airline pilot will be far more generally useful (because there are only a few paths into the career) and far less prone to being opinion based (because of the regulations) than questions about becoming a professional coder.

Ergo, I think we should allow the questions here because I highly doubt they will have the same amount of problems those very same questions have on SO and other sites that have far more paths into the career.

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