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Same Surface, Different Weight

https://www.robpanico.com/articles/display/?entry_short=same-surface-different-weight
1•retrocog•2m ago•0 comments

The Rise of Spec Driven Development

https://www.dbreunig.com/2026/02/06/the-rise-of-spec-driven-development.html
1•Brajeshwar•6m ago•0 comments

The first good Raspberry Pi Laptop

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/the-first-good-raspberry-pi-laptop/
2•Brajeshwar•6m ago•0 comments

Seas to Rise Around the World – But Not in Greenland

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/greenland-sea-levels-fall
1•Brajeshwar•7m ago•0 comments

Will Future Generations Think We're Gross?

https://chillphysicsenjoyer.substack.com/p/will-future-generations-think-were
1•crescit_eundo•10m ago•0 comments

State Department will delete Xitter posts from before Trump returned to office

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/07/nx-s1-5704785/state-department-trump-posts-x
2•righthand•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Verifiable server roundtrip demo for a decision interruption system

https://github.com/veeduzyl-hue/decision-assistant-roundtrip-demo
1•veeduzyl•14m ago•0 comments

Impl Rust – Avro IDL Tool in Rust via Antlr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmKvw73V394
1•todsacerdoti•14m ago•0 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
2•vinhnx•15m ago•0 comments

minikeyvalue

https://github.com/commaai/minikeyvalue/tree/prod
3•tosh•20m ago•0 comments

Neomacs: GPU-accelerated Emacs with inline video, WebKit, and terminal via wgpu

https://github.com/eval-exec/neomacs
1•evalexec•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Moli P2P – An ephemeral, serverless image gallery (Rust and WebRTC)

https://moli-green.is/
2•ShinyaKoyano•28m ago•1 comments

How I grow my X presence?

https://www.reddit.com/r/GrowthHacking/s/UEc8pAl61b
2•m00dy•30m ago•0 comments

What's the cost of the most expensive Super Bowl ad slot?

https://ballparkguess.com/?id=5b98b1d3-5887-47b9-8a92-43be2ced674b
1•bkls•31m ago•0 comments

What if you just did a startup instead?

https://alexaraki.substack.com/p/what-if-you-just-did-a-startup
5•okaywriting•37m ago•0 comments

Hacking up your own shell completion (2020)

https://www.feltrac.co/environment/2020/01/18/build-your-own-shell-completion.html
2•todsacerdoti•40m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Gorse 0.5 – Open-source recommender system with visual workflow editor

https://github.com/gorse-io/gorse
1•zhenghaoz•41m ago•0 comments

GLM-OCR: Accurate × Fast × Comprehensive

https://github.com/zai-org/GLM-OCR
1•ms7892•42m ago•0 comments

Local Agent Bench: Test 11 small LLMs on tool-calling judgment, on CPU, no GPU

https://github.com/MikeVeerman/tool-calling-benchmark
1•MikeVeerman•43m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AboutMyProject – A public log for developer proof-of-work

https://aboutmyproject.com/
1•Raiplus•43m ago•0 comments

Expertise, AI and Work of Future [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsxWl9iT1XU
1•indiantinker•43m ago•0 comments

So Long to Cheap Books You Could Fit in Your Pocket

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/books/mass-market-paperback-books.html
3•pseudolus•44m ago•1 comments

PID Controller

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional%E2%80%93integral%E2%80%93derivative_controller
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SpaceX Rocket Generates 100GW of Power, or 20% of US Electricity

https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/2019932764515234159
2•bkls•48m ago•0 comments

Kubernetes MCP Server

https://github.com/yindia/rootcause
1•yindia•49m ago•0 comments

I Built a Movie Recommendation Agent to Solve Movie Nights with My Wife

https://rokn.io/posts/building-movie-recommendation-agent
4•roknovosel•49m ago•0 comments

What were the first animals? The fierce sponge–jelly battle that just won't end

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00238-z
2•beardyw•58m ago•0 comments

Sidestepping Evaluation Awareness and Anticipating Misalignment

https://alignment.openai.com/prod-evals/
1•taubek•58m ago•0 comments

OldMapsOnline

https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en
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What It's Like to Be a Worm

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3•surprisetalk•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Why does STM32 (or embedded generally) development suck?

6•halfmatthalfcat•7mo ago
I'm getting into embedded development. Got me a STM32F3Discovery (recommended by Embedded Rust). Started going down the embedded rust rabbit hole before I got tired of the complexity (though do like the idea of Embassy), wanted to look for something simpler.

Started looking into embedded Zig. Looks promising but still not there, not a ton of hardware support yet.

Allergic to getting close to C++ due to all it's baggage, decide to start getting into C. Learning C was easy so started to look into getting my stuff onto a chip, again using the Discovery as my base board.

Have a slew of IDE choices, STM32CubeMX, Keil uV, various VSCode extensions. All of them are quite complex and when you get them working, they lay down A TON of files that seem somewhat irrelevant (and noisy) to creating simple programs.

The HALs are confusing so want to just leverage CMSIS and bit bang my way to greatness. ARM has system CMSIS but vendors have vendor-specific CMSIS, so (finding them) and piecing them together sucks.

Oh then you need linkers and startup scripts, where are those? Again, vendor specific that the CubeMX or uV basically pull from STM32's Github org. That org btw, tons of repos of stuff that isn't super obvious what is what, what should be used with what, etc.

Now you have what you need but you need to then flash the chip, again a couple different ways to do this.

I just want a utility that plunks down the necessary CMSIS, linker and startup so I can get my base level bearing and actually do development...why is there so much noise and cruft everywhere?

Comments

sinenomine•7mo ago
TLDR: the whole embedded dev is a cost center, very underfunded compared to normal SWE. I say it from position of compassionate interest.
halfmatthalfcat•7mo ago
It's sad because I would have thought the opposite before getting into it but it really is somewhat of a wasteland of options.
actionfromafar•7mo ago
Every branch down the sprawl of SDKs and hardware is it's own microcosm, unfortunately.
actionfromafar•7mo ago
You can use Zig in a less ambitious way, by using the regular C or C++ interface for the SDK, but your own Zig code for the rest.
npalli•7mo ago
You should try PlatformIO. It solves exactly the problem (last line) for known boards. I did some hobby work but your mileage might vary. Caution that it is C++ first platform (rather than C), so if you are having allergic reaction* might try some other toolkits.

*Given you initially chose Rust for this, I would have tagged you as someone who is into vibes/feeling good rather than getting things done, and the suggestion would have been wasted on you, but you seem to have learned your lesson so rather than dismiss C++ out of hand, take a look.

halfmatthalfcat•7mo ago
Doesn't PlatformIO do the exact same thing as CubeMX/uV? It pulls Keil Packs and lays down the same files? I don't want any of that if that's the case. The PlatformIO configuration looks saner but I still want a "minimally viable embedded environment" without any of the extra stuff.
steveklabnik•7mo ago
Hardware companies care about hardware, not software. Simple as that.

You’ve picked one of the better ones, even. It’s only downhill from here.

the__alchemist•7mo ago
The main official tools I use:

  - Stm32CubeIDE: Graphical IDE, sort of, that shows you how to configure the peripherals. I mainly use it to get clock scalers and linker config, but you can use it to configure all peripherals. Note that the linker config is straightforward for most STM32s, but is messier on H5 and H7.
  - Stm32CubeProgrammer: Flashing for production use, e.g. in DFU mode
I've been using Rust tools for everything else. I had to built a lot of tooling along the way (HAL and interaction with specific peripherals), but it was worth it. There's some boilerplate, but it's not too bad.

The PAC team has done a great job smoothing over errors in ST's IDE. The Knurling team behind `defmt`, and the probe-rs team have also be integral to this being a smooth experience. I'd go as far as saying this is one of rust's core strengths. (Easy builds and in embedded constext, flashing/debugging)

The workflow to build and flash with debugging is: `cargo run --release`.