Reverse engineering, a.k.a. looking at something. Now illegal, brought to you by capitalism
this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
561 points (98.3% liked)
Programmer Humor
27867 readers
990 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Without reverse engineering, there is no security. No way to find new bugs and vulnerabilities or confirm it's backdoor free. Just blind trust only.
It offers protection from crackers and cybergangs too, because they always follow laws. /s
Reverse engineering prohibitions are the dumbest things.
Let's say I do this. Arduino sues me. Okay. Now what? What money are they going to take?
Hell, this would be a perfect time for everyone to form an LLC and purchase Arduinos as the LLC and then release your research under your corporate name as CC0. If your LLC has no revenue, you as an individual are legally protected.
Arduino can try to put the genie back in the bottle but good luck.
Better companies than Arduino have tried to prevent hardware reverse engineering and have failed. Apple being the biggest company I can think of that have tried to sue people for releasing schematics of their motherboards.
They can't take your money but they can bury you into the ground and use you as an example so that no one ever tries to do the same thing. Ever heard of Aaron Schwartz?
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
Not for capitalism though
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.
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?
companies just can't seem to know how to grow without line go up mentality.
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
load more comments
(1 replies)
Also rp2040 devices.
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:
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 mean, it's either that or a vendor-independent ecosystem. And this rarely gets fostered by vendors.
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
load more comments
(3 replies)
Arduino is dogshit, I will not elaborate.
Arduino has its place for self-taught hobbyists. For a lot of projects, a simple code is more than enough, so there is no point of going into the more advanced mcu like esp32 or stm32.
Not since the pi pico came out.
It's cheaper, more capable, and you can still use arduino code if you want.
I can find an arduino nano clone for 3$. There are use case for ultra cheap electronics like that.
load more comments
(2 replies)
You are not wrong. Took a trip down that path for a friend, helping him create some items, which was frustratingly limited.
It is, however, super easy if you don't want/need much.
I hate to see options disappear, even if we have other reasonable options available.
Thank you for your service
I was always surprised why the TI line of MSP430s didn't take better. Guess their marketing was bullshit 🤷.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Arduino has been irrelevant for a while. There are better alternatives for everything they offer. For a start, take a look at Raspberry Pi’s microcontrollers.
Up next: Raspberry foundation enshitification.
There are already several places chomping at the bit to unseat them as the SBC default.
ST looming in the background, NXP desperately trying to smash their own kneecaps with a hammer and failing. ESP getting hit with a lightning bolt every time they try to read documentation they printed out but not when its digital...
The closest they've come so far is prioritizing industrial customers and compute modules for a while during a chip shortage, to my memory. Hopefully they stick to their roots in the hobbyist/educational sector.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I stay away from all the micro tech drama and I feel like two years ago, that community was bitching that raspberry pi sold out and everyone should switch to arduino.
I don't have a side. I just pick whatever is easiest to make a emulation station.
RbP created a publicly traded company for their hardware, which is almost-wholly-held by Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is a charity.
That sort of thing ought not be allowed, ever. It’s similar to the path Arduino took to get here. There are still other competitors, but for the time being I’m happy enough with RbPi’s dirt-cheap microcontrollers. Their mini-PCs are a different story. We’re already seeing enshittification and price gouging there. It’s just a matter of time.
I agree that it shouldn’t be allowed. But for what it’s worth, a lot of non-profits that have a product do this. Mozilla for instance.
load more comments
(1 replies)
You can also use the Arduino hardware without their IDE or libraries. You just need avr-gcc, avr-libc and a makefile. The AVR microcontrollers are very easy to program. The Arduino libraries really just get in the way once you need to do anything with timers.
True, but you can't just port arduino code to python or whatever language the raspberry picos compile from. An arduino project would have to be completely rewritten, as far as I'm aware.
you can program a Pi Pico with the Arduino IDE in C++. Some projects will just compile if you aren't using some AVR specific features like the built-in EEPROM that the RP2040 doesn't have.
the Arduino IDE in C++
That's actually pretty cool, but aren't the majority of Arduino projects written in Arduino (Java superset)? At least all of mine are, as that is how I was originally taught to program it.
edit - Please don't downvote people for seeking information. There was nothing disingenuous or underhanded about my comment, you're either downvoting because you dislike people asking questions or don't like something personal about my experience, which harms this community directly and also make the site feel unnecessarily hostile. This isn't reddit.
TL;DR: The Arduino language is C++ with an automatically included library, but it's descended from a Java project with an automatically included library.
Processing is a graphics and art based graphics library/IDE that uses the Java programming language. It basically includes some classes and methods by default on top of Java that makes programming graphics and even simple games a bit more straightforward.
Processing's IDE was forked by the Wiring project for the purposes of microcontroller hardware programming. Because the Java Virtual Machine is a bit much to ask a 16MHz 8-bit AVR to run, they switched the language to C++ which compiles straight to machine code that runs on the bare metal. Again, it's just C++ with a library included, under the hood it uses gcc to compile and avrdude to program the chip. I believe the IDE itself is still written in Java.
Arduino took Wiring and painted it teal. They've extended it quite a bit since then but in the early days Arduino was really a hardware project. They've since added support for non-AVR boards to the Arduino IDE, including ARM-Cortex and ESP32 based boards.
Raspberry Pi offers C and C++ SDKs and a MicroPython interpreter for the Pico series. Someone contributed support for RP2040 based boards to the Arduino IDE; I don't believe that was done officially by either RPi or Arduino.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
capitalism.
Qualcomm doing Qualcomm things
If you buy one of the knock-offs, will the terms still apply? Cause I think I'm seeing an out here.
I remember watching a video where they talked about the changes. Apparently most of the language people are really upset about applies specificly to their website and forums. I can find the video, probably because I am sick and have barely slept in the last 4 days. I miss sleep ... and not coughing.
I hope that you get over it soon. Coughing is the worst. I'd rather have hallucination levels of fever than have a bad cough.
view more: next ›