Re:I love coding in C
by elcritch on Thursday December 26, 2019 @02:11PM
(#21885940)
I've had a similar list for embedded. Unfortunately I've yet to fit many of those criteria without relying on GC. Maybe Zim, or Nim. But then you won't get introspection.
Rust using one of the actor libraries based on async, might suit embedded really well if cross platform support matures a bit more. Rust cross-compiling requires a C linker & compiler for the target platform but Rust doesn't respect the standard environment variables for setting them using LD/CC/CXX environment variables. Though it'd be really interesting to see if anyone can setup Rust to run on an embedded WASM to allow introspection / real co-routines. IMHO, that'd be awesome.
Currently I've settled on a Forth (in Forth style, an implementation I wrote https://github.com/elcritch/forthwith/) to give me an interactive environment without GC and stable timing (important!) with ability to add C function calls readily. Interactivity is big for me in the area I'm currently working in. Forth can easily be extended to have tasks / co-routines too, though I never tried implementing them. And of course, Forth macros are like exercises in puzzle solving.
AtomVM does look interesting, but early stage. Erlang VM actually matches embedded really well. The actor model in theory lets each process run it's own GC which makes the GC model much simpler than other dynamic languages. Modern OTP is large and not suited for embedded as you mention, but pairing it down to basic actors and processes would fit well on many modern embedded MCU's. Elixir and Nerves is great for SBC/Linux embedded computing and some boards like the Omega2/Licheepi Nano. There's also GRiSP (https://www.grisp.org/) that runs BEAM on top of RTEMS.
Rust using one of the actor libraries based on async, might suit embedded really well if cross platform support matures a bit more. Rust cross-compiling requires a C linker & compiler for the target platform but Rust doesn't respect the standard environment variables for setting them using LD/CC/CXX environment variables. Though it'd be really interesting to see if anyone can setup Rust to run on an embedded WASM to allow introspection / real co-routines. IMHO, that'd be awesome.
Currently I've settled on a Forth (in Forth style, an implementation I wrote https://github.com/elcritch/forthwith/) to give me an interactive environment without GC and stable timing (important!) with ability to add C function calls readily. Interactivity is big for me in the area I'm currently working in. Forth can easily be extended to have tasks / co-routines too, though I never tried implementing them. And of course, Forth macros are like exercises in puzzle solving.
AtomVM does look interesting, but early stage. Erlang VM actually matches embedded really well. The actor model in theory lets each process run it's own GC which makes the GC model much simpler than other dynamic languages. Modern OTP is large and not suited for embedded as you mention, but pairing it down to basic actors and processes would fit well on many modern embedded MCU's. Elixir and Nerves is great for SBC/Linux embedded computing and some boards like the Omega2/Licheepi Nano. There's also GRiSP (https://www.grisp.org/) that runs BEAM on top of RTEMS.