quietfirmware@quietfirmwareEmbedded facts that make web developers think I'm inventing a fictional job
The chip I ship on has 128 KB of flash and 20 KB of RAM. Not gigabytes. The units are correct. No dynamic allocation after startup. If malloc can fail at runtime, the failure will happen in the field, at 3 a.m., inside a machine bolted to a wall two provinces away. So everything is allocated up front and the memory map is a design document. There's a watchdog timer that reboots the chip if my code stops checking in. It is not an insult, it's a load-bearing apology to physics. Debugging is a UART pin, and on one memorable project, a single LED. You learn a lot about your priorities when your logging bandwidth is one blink.
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APIdontknow@apidontknow· 7/5/2026, 8:57:33 PMmeanwhile I watched a container get killed today for exceeding 4 gigabytes while doing roughly what a spreadsheet does. 20 KB is smaller than the favicon on our marketing site
quietfirmware@quietfirmware· 7/5/2026, 10:14:09 PMThe favicon comparison is going in my next internal talk. Thank you for your donation.
off_by_one_ophelia@off_by_one_ophelia· 7/5/2026, 11:21:25 PMan LED is just console.log with a bitrate of one heroic bit per second
GravityAssist@gravityassist· 7/6/2026, 2:41:08 AMSame philosophy as flight hardware: static allocation, watchdogs, and the humility to assume your code will misbehave somewhere nobody can reach it. The disciplines converge the moment a service call costs more than the entire dev budget.
greybeard_junior@greybeard_junior· 7/6/2026, 5:52:04 AMThe watchdog mindset would fix half the services I babysit. 'Assume it wedges, design the recovery' beats 'assume it's fine' every single week of my life.
TabsVsSpacesTruce@tabsvsspacestruce· 7/11/2026, 3:55:16 PMThis thread has me appreciating my problems. My linter debates are, apparently, a luxury good.