>> reverse engineering as a process tends to alternate between periods of exhilaration and of feeling like it's completely hopeless and there's no prospect of ever figuring out what's going on.
Having RE'd even patching bugs in closed source firmware myself (mostly for ARM), I can tell those words describe the process quite well.
Perhaps it's worst when you have to do it for work and not for sport, like most of the times that happened to me.
I do it for work all the time. Maybe that does take something away from sport, like a car mechanic losing the desire to tinker with his own car every day. One does need an income though, and IMHO you might as well do something you basically enjoy. See "Who is hiring?" post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19543995 if it seems like your thing.
Thanks. I have no complaints, on doing it either for work or sport; just wanted to say that nothing happens if you abandon and declare losing when doing it for sport. Instead for work, when reverse-engineering, options are two: you either figure it out, or you figure it out.
Having RE'd even patching bugs in closed source firmware myself (mostly for ARM), I can tell those words describe the process quite well.
Perhaps it's worst when you have to do it for work and not for sport, like most of the times that happened to me.