[TriEmbed] The enshittification of Arduino begins? Qualcomm starts clamping down @itsfoss2

[John Vaughters]

Steve,

100% Agree. AI writes the code and I have yet to find much limitation. I do clean up the code and make changes as needed, but laying out the concept is the key. Knowing what is possible and providing the ideas by understanding conceptual Engineering/Science and computing technology is where the work will be in the future. AI is lowering the skill bar and ideas will become more important. The future is in solution building and coding will be ancillary concern. I am already using it this way and my coding productivity has gone through the roof.

Your description is one I have seen and are living as well.

Despite people being concerned for jobs, history has shown these jumps in technology exponentially increase jobs. The jobs just won't be the same as before. As I recently heard, when you reduce the cost of a product, people buy more. When clothes started being made in automated looms, people bought more clothes because it was cheaper. Increased productivity always brings abundance. 

Thanks,

John Vaughters






On Saturday, November 22, 2025 at 08:47:54 AM EST, Trampas Stern via TriEmbed <triembed at triembed.org> wrote: 





In my personal opinion Arudino has been dying a slow death for years, mainly from then number of bugs in their code and libraries. However it is really falling fast now because AI will be taking over that market area.

In the last ~6 months AI has gotten really good at firmware/software development. I had AI write an entire web app that monitors remote servers data logs and alerts me on failures, I did not write or edit a single line of code. Around 80%-90% of code I develop is AI based now (even embedded), as such I no longer care about the programming language, APIs, etc. 

For example, I now write chip drivers by feeding datasheet to AI where it writes the driver for me, and will not go back to doing it manually ever again. 
Needed FATFS and SD card driver, just told AI to add to project and include test cases to verify it worked. Which it did, and worked on the first try, of course this was Zephyr based project so not a huge lift, but it worked. 
Even Zephyr device trees are insignificant to AI, I don't have to figure out convoluted syntax or setup, I just tell AI what I want. Even had AI write python test cases to run on desktop which verify that Bluetooth worked correctly. 

The point is that when you can ask AI to setup a development container and IDE for your embedded project, then write code and test cases, so there is little need for Arduino. 

I should mention that I was debating on learning Rust for embedded development last year, I choose not to. Specifically, AI is at the point that the programming language is irrelevant. That is AI will be able to translate code from one language to another with little effort. Also it will be able to verify that C/C++ is just as safe as Rust code. As such embedded development will be moving to a job of project management, where you are managing the project requirements, testing and tasking AI with writing code. 

Even on the webserver project AI was having a hard time with javascript component, kept having lots of syntax mistakes. So I told it to write a lint tool to verify its results. So it wrote a javascript lint tool and would run it and fix its own mistakes. Basically AI today is as good as college level intern. That is it makes some dumb mistakes but can be highly productive with the correct "management". 

I see AI technology is much like computers were in the 80s that is everyone could see how they would be use and the advantages of having one on everyone's desk. It will redefine the job market much like computers changed the typing pools at large companies. That is there will be a shift in skills you need for a job towards AI. 

The point is if you are worried about Arudino, instead take some time and try the latest AI using copilot and VSCode, you might find like me that Arudino is insignificant, like a typewriter. 

Trampas

On Sat, Nov 22, 2025 at 1:13 AM Dwight Morgan via TriEmbed <triembed at triembed.org> wrote:
> The enshittification of Arduino begins? Qualcomm starts clamping down @itsfoss2
> 
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