I'm trying to familiarize myself with the embedded field, but also have limited resources in terms of time and equipment to buy.
What's a good language to wrap my head around embedded, without investing too much time leaning an embedded-specific language? I'm most familiar with PHP, Java, Actionscript, but unfortunately know very little C. I remember reading somewhere that someone used PERL to program embedded systems, but not sure if that's really possible.
Can learning be done without needing to buy chips, etc. via simulators or such?
Can someone recommend a simplified roadmap to show how one would get sarted? I'm a little unsure where to even start.