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I'm not an embedded systems guy (besides using esp32 boards) so this might be a dumb question but does something like this open up the possibility of programmin

I'm not an embedded systems guy (besides using esp32 boards) so this might be a dumb question but does something like this open up the possibility of programming an esp32/arduino board with Javascript, like Micro/Circuit Python?

redfloatplane 10mo ago
Sort of related: About ten years ago there was a device called the Tessel by Technical Machine which you programmed with Javascript, npm, the whole nine yards. It was pretty clever - the javascript got transpiled to Lua VM bytecode and ran in the Lua VM on the device (a Cortex M3 I believe). I recently had Claude rewrite their old Node 0.8 CLI tools in Rust because I wasn't inclined to do the javascript archeology needed to get the old tools up and running. Of course then I put the Tessel back in its drawer, but fun nonetheless.
- niutech 10mo ago
  There are still Espruino JS devices.
halfmatthalfcat 10mo ago
There are already libraries/frameworks that have supported this: * espruino (https://www.espruino.com/ https://www.espruino.com/) * elk (https://github.com/cesanta/elk https://github.com/cesanta/elk) * DeviceScript (Microsoft Research's now defunct effort, https://github.com/microsoft/devicescript https://github.com/microsoft/devicescript)
- niutech 10mo ago
  And also Duktape (https://duktape.org https://duktape.org)
15155 10mo ago
Yes. The key enabling feature is a lack of malloc()
cxr 10mo ago
That's been possible with Moddable/Kinoma's XS engine, which is standards compliant with ES6 and beyond. <https://www.moddable.com/faq#comparison https://www.moddable.com/faq#comparison> If you take a look at the MicroQuickJS README, you can see that it's not a full implementation of even ES5, and it's incompatible in several ways. Just being able to run JS also isn't going to automatically give you any bindings for the environment.
matt_trentini 10mo ago
It's a good _start_; much more code needs to be written to allow control of the hardware of those devices (GPIO, I2C etc).

redfloatplane 10mo ago

Sort of related: About ten years ago there was a device called the Tessel by Technical Machine which you programmed with Javascript, npm, the whole nine yards. It was pretty clever - the javascript got transpiled to Lua VM bytecode and ran in the Lua VM on the device (a Cortex M3 I believe). I recently had Claude rewrite their old Node 0.8 CLI tools in Rust because I wasn't inclined to do the javascript archeology needed to get the old tools up and running. Of course then I put the Tessel back in its drawer, but fun nonetheless.

niutech 10mo ago
There are still Espruino JS devices.

halfmatthalfcat 10mo ago

There are already libraries/frameworks that have supported this: * espruino (https://www.espruino.com/ https://www.espruino.com/) * elk (https://github.com/cesanta/elk https://github.com/cesanta/elk) * DeviceScript (Microsoft Research's now defunct effort, https://github.com/microsoft/devicescript https://github.com/microsoft/devicescript)

niutech 10mo ago
And also Duktape (https://duktape.org https://duktape.org)

15155 10mo ago

Yes. The key enabling feature is a lack of malloc()

cxr 10mo ago

That's been possible with Moddable/Kinoma's XS engine, which is standards compliant with ES6 and beyond. <https://www.moddable.com/faq#comparison https://www.moddable.com/faq#comparison> If you take a look at the MicroQuickJS README, you can see that it's not a full implementation of even ES5, and it's incompatible in several ways. Just being able to run JS also isn't going to automatically give you any bindings for the environment.

matt_trentini 10mo ago

It's a good _start_; much more code needs to be written to allow control of the hardware of those devices (GPIO, I2C etc).