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Help learning low-level dev
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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Programming
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For bare metal definitely get a microcontroller and do some fun electronics project.
Easiest to get into is Arduino, but don't stick with that because its only redeeming feature is that it's easy to get into. The IDE sucks, the build system sucks, the APIs really suck, and the code quality is very low (probably because it's easy to get into so you get a lot of inexperienced people doing stuff).
After Arduino I would recommend either going to the Nordic nRF5x series - you can do some cool Bluetooth stuff, or even make you your own radio protocol since the radio peripheral is fully documented... Or ESP32 with Rust and Embassy is probably the most modern and slick way to do microcontrollers.
It does require learning Rust but Rust is really really good so you should do that anyway.
There are some extremely good videos on YouTube about that: https://youtube.com/@therustybits
I would probably still start with Arduino though since you know C. Just don't stay there for too long.
This is also my recommendation. Working with an OS on an SBC is fine but won't give you the fundamentals like this.
The PIC family of micros are also great. I also recommended trying a few assembly programs to get a feel for those induction sets.
Oh that reminds me. I wouldn't recommend PIC in the 21st century but there's a really cool project called BIO that is an open source alternative to Raspberry's PIO (programmable IO). It's RV32-E with custom x16-31 registers that control the pins directly. Very neat idea.
It's by Bunnies Huang and he talks about it in this talk about Xous.
The hardware is (or will be) here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/baochip
May be a bit hardcore for a beginner though.
Oh that sounds interesting, also thanks for suggesting the nRF5x series, it sounds quite interesting to experiment with bluetooth. And actually I was planning on also learning Rust as I've seen it is quite modern in the memory management and safety.