It's not that cheap, having recently gone through the process of looking at a hardware refresh of one our devices, anything that runs Linux ended up too expensi

It's not that cheap, having recently gone through the process of looking at a hardware refresh of one our devices, anything that runs Linux ended up too expensive as it really needs something with a MMU and more RAM. Not to mention boot times are an issue. Real Time is trickier, also if low power is a issue, then it's really a bad idea. Rust is kind of interesting in this space, but a little bleeding edge, will likely look at adopting it later. Ended up picking an Cortex-M3 and using FreeRTOS. With a C / Lua mix. Not because I particularly prefer them, but it requires the least compromises. Also writing robust embedded C code is pretty well understood with many common patterns. Still, it requires being more diligent and disciplined than many other languages.