I've recently been watching some videos of people resurrecting mid-1970's vintage computers based upon the then new microprocessor. Even though the base configu

I've recently been watching some videos of people resurrecting mid-1970's vintage computers based upon the then new microprocessor. Even though the base configuration of these machines came with about a kilobyte of RAM and a similar amount of ROM, they managed a degree of interactivity through a machine language monitor. Of course, upgrading the memories allowed for more sophisticated interactive languages like BASIC. It left me quite surprised that a similar progression in interactive development tools has been, at best, a novelty item in the microcontroller world. Most microcontrollers are more capable and include the requisite UART, yet the only way you're going to interact with most of them is with a much more powerful computer and a frequently costly[1] hardware interface for debugging. While those are fine in most cases, there are times when I would have (figuratively) killed to be able to go in and change a couple of bytes. [1] Yes, I am cheap. Incidentally, I think one of the brilliant things about the introduction of the Raspberry Pi Pico was not just having MicroPython available on the day of introduction, but instructions on programming a second identically inexpensive Pico to be an SWD.