Summary

Colin Walls surveys the past and present programming languages used in embedded systems, from legacy choices like Fortran to contemporary options. The blog evaluates trade-offs—toolchain, runtime cost, safety, and portability—and offers practical thoughts on future language adoption for firmware design.

Key Takeaways

• Compare the strengths and weaknesses of legacy languages (Fortran, Ada, C) versus modern choices (C++, Rust, MicroPython) for embedded use cases.
• Evaluate toolchain, runtime, and memory trade-offs when choosing a language for firmware, bare-metal, or embedded Linux projects.
• Plan migration or interoperability strategies, including FFI and incremental rewrites, for legacy embedded codebases.
• Identify safety, performance, and maintenance implications to guide language selection on microcontrollers and RISC-V targets.
• Assess when higher-level runtimes or domain-specific languages make sense for IoT and resource-constrained systems.

Who Should Read This

Embedded firmware engineers, architects, and technical leads with some experience who need to evaluate language choices or plan migrations for constrained systems.

Still RelevantIntermediate

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