PICs - Playground or 'serious' microcontroller

[RussMartin]

If it was so easy to earn money with chips why isn't everyone doing it ?

It isn't clear to me whether you mean by manufacturing them or by designing with them. Also: Not everyone is doing digital or digital/analog designs. (There are still plenty of analog-only applications out there!) Further, there are a lot of people with ideas but without sufficient knowledge--especially in some fundamental aspects of electronics--to execute them.

It's my job to take another person's idea and make it a reality. I don't invent products, I design them for other people. I'm a superannuated engineer (57 as of 10 days ago), but not, I hope, completely obsolete. I'm still always learning to work with new devices and applications. And I've managed make a comfortable living doing it.

Go into detail how one could make much money with microchips. And by detail I am talking about "including proof".

Do you mean "microchips" generically? Or Microchip's (the company's) products?

I don't know what for you constitutes "proof". I'm not going to post my designs or name my clients or disclose my earnings (that's between me and the IRS!). The intellectual properties belong to me, and my clients have a proprietary interest that I am contractually obliged to honor. Unlike Melanie, I don't know any people who have become millionaires, but I do know several who have made handsome sums of money from their designs.

It wasn't a PIC application, but I did have the good fortune to have a rather unique design go into space on shuttle mission STS-95 in 1998. It used a 68HC11; the code was done mostly in Small C and the rest in assembler.

Further deponent sayeth not.