What is the difference between device driver programming and?
The main difference is, when you do device driver development, you directly talk to hardware using your code, which means you basically read and write registers. You require good knowledge of microcontroller/microprocessor architecture, peripheral interfaces and protocols, programming the microcontroller, ability to understand datasheets, device driver structure, API, kernel mode privileges, kernel mode functions, loading device drivers, interfacing with device drivers from applications, interrupt handlers, DMA programming, etc etc.. So you need good amount hardware, programming, debugging, OS internals,system level knowledge. Application programming is mainly developing business logic using some programming language based on your use cases. You have to be very good in a particular programming language along with good logic and debugging skills. There are multiple tools, languages to develop application programs on different platforms but device drivers are mainly developed using C language. Unlike application programs, device drivers are hard to debug and hence the errors in the driver might crash the system easily. In a nutshell, application programming is more generic and device driver development is somewhat niche skill.