Re:Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020
by vibrolax on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @12:46PM
(#21982387)
Most of Arduino's value proposition is easy programmability by non-professionals, with a vast library of examples. Cheap and powerful STM32 boards have been around for years about as long as arduino, supported by a number of free toolchains. But the care and feeding of said toolchains and libraries requires a lot more technical knowledge than Arduino's ecosystem.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I agree with this statement, and really praise what Arduino have done in this space (I started on one years ago). However, I think if you really want to work with embedded systems, you have to understand the technical details.
Understanding how communication protocols are supposed to work, knowing how to read a data sheet, and using those skills to set registers on an IC directly should be in everyone's toolbox. Otherwise, you're limited to whatever chips someone's wrote an Arduino library for.
Plus, debugging is much more difficult if you can't analyze a stream of data with a scope or logic analyzer, and actually understand what you're looking at.
To be a professional developer of embedded software, of course you need to be capable of dealing with things starting from the bare metal. Arduino is a recognition that many embedded software problems can be usefully solved above the register level. The deeper levels will always be there for those so inclined.
Re:Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020
by curious_one on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @10:29PM
(#21987988)
Do you have any good resources for embedded systems that you can recommend?
I was going to pick a few cheap books on Arduino as I thought that was the way to go.
I am a hobbyist, but I want to try to build some viable products.
Since https://platformio.org/ that is no longer the case as well.