The interesting linked article reminds me that techniques (crutches?) popular in the embedded world still seem fresh and new to the rest of the computing commun

The interesting linked article reminds me that techniques (crutches?) popular in the embedded world still seem fresh and new to the rest of the computing community. A scheduler need not be complex - a superloop / commutator / for (;;) {} construction that polls clients and workers is usually enough to provide the appearance of a preemptive multitasker. The complexities typically arise in communicating data from interrupt contexts back to the foreground thread, and from appropriately designing the elements to deal with exceptions, but these complexities are already familiar to anyone developing non-trivial products whether or not a preemptive switcher is around.