5 ms·
you're right, there are "good" embedded systems, but there are still all sorts of 8 bit processors (some of them the same old suspects) with small on-chip memor
by fsckboy 4y ago
you're right, there are "good" embedded systems, but there are still all sorts of 8 bit processors (some of them the same old suspects) with small on-chip memory embedded in devices. You think those christmas cards that play tinny music are running multivoice synths DSP through GPUs with 18 bit D/A and spare cycles, and will do autocomplete for you if you can get a terminal connected? uh uh.
- oh_sigh 4y agoNo, but the people who programmed them probably did so on a linux machine with GBs of RAM and GHzs of CPU
- skybrian 4y agoI wouldn’t expect a terminal session at all in that case.
- bitwize 4y agoSome very small computers can talk VT100 over RS232.
- fsckboy 4y agothere's no problem with small computers talking over rs232, even a single bit wordsize (as on the original HP calculators) could pull it off, but thats moving the goalposts. i was replying to the context of embedded cpu chips that still to this day find it economical to not come with the required memory to hold the code for human interface niceties, because it was suggested that they didn't exist.
- skybrian 4y agoYou missed my point, actually. I wasn't suggesting a command-line shell that has autocomplete should run on the device. I was saying that you usually don't need any developer tools on the device at all. All you need is a way to upload firmware. All the developer tools can run on the laptop. You can run VSCode and work with tiny devices. This means that making developer tools small and simple to run on tiny devices has little point anymore, and languages don't need to be small and simple either.