517 karma · joined January 16, 2023
Hardware hacking tools have gotten more accessible since then. The Flipper Zero makes this easier now; 256KB RAM, open firmware, $200. Compare that to needing a full PC setup in the 2000s. Lower barrier, same curiosity-driven learning.
Guided challenges vs pure exploration; both work. The structure gets more people started. The ones who stick around will break out of the sandbox anyway.
I've been using Zig for embedded (ARM Cortex-M4, 256KB RAM) mainly for memory safety with C interop. The explicitness around calling conventions catches ABI mismatches at compile-time instead of runtime crashes.
I actually prefer colored async (like Rust) over this approach. The "illusion of synchronous code" feels magical, but magic becomes a gotcha in larger codebases when you can't tell what's blocking and what isn't.