>The dev who writes a native-code Markdown gem for Rails is going to be surprised at how different the experience of writing a SPI bus driver is.
Again, you're taking what I said and twisting the logic beyond recognition. No one uses Rails to do embedded programming. No one expects normal Rails and embedded Rails to be the same (because there is no embedded Rails).
Embedded C and "desktop" C are more or less exactly the same. They are the same language, in just about every way.
This is absolutely not true with standard Java and embedded Java subsets (like Java Card). There are huge differences in the language itself, like those I mentioned. Half the reason people use Java is the memory management features. Java minus these features is a fundamentally different language. Not to mention the lack of certain fundamental types (No floats, no multi-dimensional arrays, etc.) and other weird quirks of systems like Java Card.
> you were wrong to begin with when you scoffed at the idea of Java being used for remote controls, given that small consumer electronics were the original problem domain for the language that became Java,
Argumentum ad antiquitatem, or maybe argumentum ad auctoritatem (towards Sun). Just because Java was intended to be used for something does not mean it's any good at that thing.
>and you're wrong today, given that there are relatively popular and very successful small-form-factor embedded environments based on Java.
Argumentum ad populum. Just because a lot of people use some subset of Java for embedded programming doesn't mean it's a good idea. Lots of people use PHP too; it's not because it's a good thing to do; it's because PHP programmers are cheap. If I had to hazard a guess, that's the same reason people use Java in embedded environments.