alt Hacker NewsA bit of topic , but I wonder if people who are starting in this field not directly start on esp32 platforms. It's so damn easy to develop with AI on these platforms. In the past we spend a week on lcd drivers alone. Now one can build an entire application that controls other devices via serial, has its own fancy UI, has all kind of useless features like 40 languages, its own webserver, OTA, demo modes and more. With Arduino I am not sure what you get these days
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I just started with esp-idf because I can't stand all the bloat of Arduino/Platform.io/ESPHome. Especially now where working with unfamiliar tech stack is easier than ever.
Yeah I did a project with ESP32 and micropython recently and getting the proof of concept up was very very quick. The agent I was using also had no problem writing drivers for peripherals that didnt already have micropython drivers (I seem to recall it ported C or Arduino reference code)
The first ESP32 board I worked with had some damn WiFi stack running in the background—not nearly as "bare metal" as I had come to expect from having just stepped out of the Arduino world.
(I've since learned, from an LLM, ha ha, how to turn that off if you don't need it.)
I predict the AI enabled MCU development wave will lift all ships.
AI has absolutely crushed the barrier to entry for using this gear. It's a spectacular turn of events and I suspect sales have never been better, if my own behavior is any indication.
Arduino ships an STM32 which is really feature rich btw.
I really can't get over how many things in life do not require an OS but people used them anyways because it's easier to develop on.