Yep, more that actually being able to turn interrupts off is a barrier to doing real time work on desktop OS's, for example. Even if you can disable them global

Yep, more that actually being able to turn interrupts off is a barrier to doing real time work on desktop OS's, for example. Even if you can disable them globally (I think on the Pi you can with some low level C), but stuff goes wonky quickly e.g. if the WiFi soc doesn't get serviced. It's a good lesson to play with polling versus interrupts on a micro. Susprising just how many cycles it takes to jump into the ISR.