this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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Maybe it's just what I've been noticing, but I feel like Arduino was already losing its share of the hobbyist market. The plethora of small, cheap esp32 devices have already been taking Arduino's place.
Same with raspberrypi really.
companies just can't seem to know how to grow without line go up mentality.
That's just it, you don't need to grow. Just sell a useful product at a reasonable price.
In capitalism, the consumer isn't the target audience. A business exists to make money. The more money you make, the more shareholders you gain, the more the shareholders demand BLOOD!
No one forces you to sell shares.
... untill someone does.
If you own the company, no one can force you to sell shares.
???
You don't need to take your company public, you know?
You can just stay its sole owner, then no one can force you to do anything with it (except for a judge).
Which countries?
Any country which has the concept of private property, and a relatively robust political and legal system.
We recently had to get rid of a vendor at work because the private company was bought out by a foreign power. Can't say more than that. Kinda sucks as now we have to replace some of the infa.
Against their will? Or did they make a choice because the offer was too good?
No idea.
Depends on the laws. In certain situations, you may be forced to sell part/all of you company.
Besides the legal ways, someone may threaten you or something demanding that you sell it, its not impossible.
I think that only happens if you manage to acquire a monopoly and are forced to break up your company - I'm not entirely sure you have to sell parts of it publicly even then
Unless the someone happens to be the owner.
Not for capitalism though
They seem to forget that "line go up" isn't the primary objective. If you make a good product and give half a shit about your customers, the line goes up as a natural consequence.
Yes, but line go up fast enough?
Line go brrrr?
That's like saying "people just can't seem to harness the advantages of cancer without dying"
If you never take money and get hooked by outside sources, you can just slowly grow, with no debt, beholden to no one
If you take the money with any strings attached at all, you basically have to grow like cancer or your company will be sold for parts. It's inevitable at that point
Don't take the money kids. If you have to take a business loan in the beginning - fine,
was the comma a typo of a period, or did you have more to say here? if you have more to say i'm eager to listen
I meant to delete the comment to keep things simple, but what I was going to say is something like
fine, but debt is like gambling. There's situations where it makes sense, but it's addictive. It's mortgaging your own future, even when it maths out it's a risk - shit happens
And if you over leverage and under perform, it's over. If you can pay yourself and your employees, you're better off never taking on debt again.
Like Wegmans. It's the very best grocery store, everyone who goes there agrees. They grow slowly because they only open new locations when they have the cash to do so, and so they never have to compromise on quality in any way
Also rp2040 devices.
Odd that the newer RP2350 has a lower clock speed, while being improved in most other respects. Is that why the RP2040 is still seemingly the community preference?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP2350
Personally, I never really counted the RP2350 as a successor. It's a different animal completely. A 2040 successor would be something like 4x cortex-m0's or a faster clock with more ram or whatever, the 2350 has completed different capabilities and components and can live along side the 2040.
I feel like the preferred one is the 2040 simply because it's cheaper, and capable enough for the vast majority of use cases at this point.
Edit: yes I know RPI called their board using the 2350 the pico 2, but the 2040 chip itself is used in more places than just the pico and not every one used the 2350 as a v2.
Cheap. Also, a large part of the tinkering community never moves past soldering or perf board + lack of cheap 2354 boards. 2040 is already good enough for keebs and most projects. 2350 had eratta E9 published (gpio lockup) which killed its initial adoption rate for more advanced projects PicoLogicAnalyzer, protocol emulation, etc.
I'm getting into meshtastic and learned how those esp32 devices are everywhere! They seem pretty neat
Nice! I have a couple too. There's a community if your interested:
!meshtastic@mander.xyz
Hey thanks! I was wondering what my alternatives were. Bought RPis, having remembered that name from a decade ago, and then read the posts here about how those are getting worse. Glad to see something that could take their place for my next project :) This is the kind of stuff I come to programming.dev for.
There are clones now more open than arduino that we can buy. In addition esp32 and other small boards are awesome.
I love the ESP32, was onboard with the ESP-8266 (might have the numbers wrong, it was the predecessor), but I thought the real difference between the ESP-32 and the Rpi was that the Rpi has an OS with a possible desktop even (and all that Libux has to offer basically), as the ESP is more of a uProcessor you program in C/C++?
Edit: Plesse disregard, I mixed up the posts and posted one levet too high too...
To answer your question anyway, raspberry Pi made the rp2040 chip, which is a microcontroller similar to the esp, instead of a full fat computer SOC
But how many of those esp32s are programmed using the Arduino IDE and Arduino libraries?
Many. But there too, I'm seeing many people move to VScode + platformio. I'm not saying Arduino is already dead, I'm just saying that the alternatives were already gaining ground.
I program my EPS32s in micropython anyway.
I mean, it's either that or a vendor-independent ecosystem. And this rarely gets fostered by vendors.