Comment by IshKebab

> But have you ever DESIGNED a microcontroller

Yes... But in fairness I was just talking about the digital RTL, not the messy analogue stuff (PLLs, power/reset, etc.) I've never done that.

> but software is definitely easier to modify, iterate and fix,

Definitely true.

> which is why sofware tools and resulting applications can evolve so fast.

Not sure I agree here though. It seems to me that EDA tools evolve super slowly because a) hardware engineers are timid old fogies who never want to learn anything new, and b) the big three have a monopoly on tooling.