It has been a while since I touched a low level programming. In fact I have not done it for my side project for nearly a decade. And I am genuinely stunned how much forward have we leaped.
Good ol times
It might seem like I am old when I say that, but I remember developing low level boards back 10 years ago. It was a big pain. Not only because each board would have their own toolchain, the projects would be built with random build system CMake, Make or even bash scripts. Not only because toolchains and compilers were not very friendly to a newbie users. But first and foremost how the UX of the entire experience looked like.
Sufficiently to say when I joined one of the companies in the past as a consultant, it could have taken me 1-2 weeks to set up my colleagues development environment.
Now I could be cynical and say 'get good' but I am aware that some people out there actually touch grass more often than once a month. And looking back right now, it is solvable in a nicer way.
My growing interest in engineering projects
As I moved up the stack in my career I had a specific itch that no software development for the companies could quite scratch. Buying 3d printer and getting into fusion seemed to be a good approximation of what I was lacking. But it was a smell of melting solder that finally got me to understand what I was missing. I wanted to make something physical, something I could actually see, use in my daily life that wouldn't become an imaginary pixels on someones phone or screen. So I felt like I can buy soldering practice kit and maybe some PCB board to do some fun project. Around that time, user on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/1mcbm4w/esptimecast_now_supports_esp32_boards/ created this awesome esp 32 watch that I really felt I could give it a shot and build.
State of embedded right now
I was genuinely surprised about ease of getting started in this project and how cheap/accessible everything went. I really liked the fact that:
- VS Code supports now embedded development pretty much with installing one extension only
- The price of ESP32 boards :o 3$ per board is genuinely crazy low
- Github popularity and cost of projects - it was few dollars to purchase the project access for 3d prints and everything was nicely accessible in github
Final thoughts
I think the embedded development became way more accessible than I remember it being few years back and I genuinely love it. I think you should give the project a go if you want to have quite cool customizable watch for yourself. I also think there is huge potential for home improvement projects with ESP32 boards (or similar) which is way more cost accessible than in the past.
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