TinyGo & Arduino

Sébastien Boisgérault –⁠ Mines Paris, PSL

Arduino

Arduino Uno, microcontroller ATMega328p (Atmel)

• AVR RISC 8-bit architecture

• CPU speed: 16 MHz

• Program memory size: 32KB

• Data size: ~ 2 KB

Go (aka Golang)

"Simple, secure, scalable"

• Open-source (Google)

• Easy to learn

• Large standard library

Good for

• Tooling & Hackers (Python competitor)

• Infrastructure & Backend (Java competitor)

• Distributed & Concurrent Programming, Networking, Cloud-Native Language.

Company & Products

• Google, Uber, Twitch, Dropbox, Soundcloud, Alibaba, Paypal, etc.

• Caddy (HTTP Server), Docker, Pulumi, Kubernetes (containers, cloud/infra managament), Wails (GUI apps), BubbleTea (TUI framework), Badger (database), WebRTC, MQTT (network/protocols), etc.

Positionning

Like Python (high-level, rapid development, ...):

• List-like and dict-like collections, closures, etc.

• Fast & fun development cycle

• Garbage collected

• "Batteries included"

Like C (efficient, low footprint, ...):

• Compiled language

• Static typing

• Value types & pointers

TinyGo

Go compiler for small places

Microcontrollers (MCU), Consoles, WebAssembly, etc.

TinyGo

• Small code/data footprint!

• Target architectures beyond Linux/Windows/Mac: AVR, ARM (Cortex M),
  RISC-V, XTensa, WebAssembly.

• machine package: support for GPIO, ADC, PWM, etc.

MCU Programming Languages

• Assembly (ASM)

• C

• C++

• (Tiny)Go

• Python MicroPython

• Erlang/Elixir (via AtomVM or Nerves)

• Rust

• Zig

• ...

Experiment with TinyGo

• Simpler than C/ASM (but C interface via CGO?),

• Leaner and closer to the metal than (micro)Python,

• Great concurrency model,

• Positive side-effect for desktop/server development.