7 April 2008

2. Microcontrollers

These days we have devices that don’t just have four gates in them, they have tens and hundreds of thousands of gates. So much so that these devices can run a series of simple instructions. A lot of the external circuitry that was required in the past is simply not necessary. As I always suspected, software has taken over the world.

Making software is a creative act, and like writing music, I’m always astonished at the fact that you essentially creating something from nothing. Now that microcontrollers are cheap enough for anyone to play with, it means that all those complicated little electronic things can now be created out of software, not hardware. And creating it out of software means that we are creating these things out of nothing. Astonishing.

Anyway, enough philosophy. Let’s make some leds flash.

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