Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help

Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by makapuf on Monday May 04, 2020 @05:15PM (#23073355)

Thats exactly what i did while working on dreaded big data. Got myself a microcontroller, implemented a small arm console and write fucking low level C code optimized the heck of cpu cycles for tiny games, no code reuse, no interfaced, no deadlines, no refacto, no security, no network, no politics. Barely version control (with appropriate "update" commit messages). Kept me sane while doing those things at work.

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Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by ay on Monday May 04, 2020 @06:00PM (#23073835)

+1 on the small 1-2 weekend tangible projects, that you may have wanted to build before, but never got to, they are great for morale.

This weekend I implemented RS232-powered RGB LED that is controlled attiny85, which reacts to strings sent to that very same RS232. A gross violation of standard, probably, but it works! It definitely added a lot of joy.

I typed “git init” only after I finished the first working version which had a regular One-color LED, and could not yet do blinking :-)

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Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by BenjiWiebe on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @08:59PM (#23086885)

For even more fun with low level breaking of standards, bit-banging rs232 is fun and very doable. Don't use timers for timing either, just spin the cpu the right number of times. :)

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Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by ay on Sunday May 10, 2020 @01:43PM (#23134459)

This project actually does decode of Rs232 data, with the special prefix triggering the interpreter mode where you can control the color and delay between the cycles. Only ground and TX pins are used to connect. Oh, and no interrupts - poll for the start bit while running the currently programmed light animation cycle :-)

One thing that made the development of it all immensely easier was having a Saleae logic analyzer. Highly recommend it (no affiliation, just a happy customer).

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Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by OnACoffeeBreak on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:37AM (#23078914)

I have a similar dream, but it involves starting from the ground up:

- Implement a CPU and peripherals in an FPGA

- Throw together an OS

- Make a handheld game console

Why? Because it would be fun to remind myself of the "first principals" (not talking physics here) and play around with it.

For now, I'm playing around with Raylib [0] and Allegro [1] which are C game libraries.

Do you have a link to your console hardware?

0: https://github.com/raysan5/raylib

1: https://liballeg.org/

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Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by makapuf on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @08:18AM (#23079182)

sure : https://github.com/makapuf/bitbox (see also many small repos for games, most of those being unfinished, as expected)

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Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by kahlonel on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @09:31AM (#23090707)

I feel fortunate to have chosen embedded software as the career path. 10 years in industry now and never had a dull moment (though I've had some bad colleagues/clients). I work inside a terminal all day, no GUI (even use GDB TUI), and somehow never get bored of it. I think having a physical entity responding to your code immediately (blinking LED for example) keeps the programmer interested.

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Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by Hendrikto on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @08:42AM (#23079365)

> Barely version control (with appropriate "update" commit messages). Kept me sane

Does not sound like it would keep me sane…

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Re:Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help by cblum on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @03:43AM (#23077502)

Interesting, I’m on the same boat. Embedded systems and low-level coding are my beacons of sanity.

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