Blinking An Arduino LED, In Julia

The Julia programming language is a awful in good shape for a no-frills microcontroller like the ATMega328p that lies inside the typical Arduino, but that didn’t halt [Sukera] from seeking, and succeeding.

All of the features that make Julia a interesting programming language for your significant computer make it an awful decision for the Arduino. It is created for interactivity, is dynamically typed, and leans seriously on its garbage selection each of these options alone would tax the Mega to the breaking issue. But in its favor, it is a compiled language that is based mostly on LLVM, and LLVM has an AVR backend for C. Really should just be a very simple issue of stubbing out some of the overhead, recompiling LLVM to incorporate an AVR target for Julia, and then repairing up all the other loose finishes, suitable?

Perfectly, it turns out it virtually was. Leaning intensely on the versatility of LLVM, [Sukera] manages to change off all the language functions that are not wanted, and right after some modest hurdles like the common difficulties with volatile and atomic variables, manages to blink an LED bit by bit. Huzzah. We adore [Sukera’s] wry “Now THAT is what I phone two times properly invested!” after it is all finished, but very seriously, this is the first time we’ve each and every viewed even super-rudimentary Julia code jogging on an 8-bit microcontroller, so there are undoubtedly some kudos thanks below.

By the time that Julia is wedged into the AVR, a good deal of what makes it interesting on the major pcs is lacking on the micro, so we really don’t seriously see persons buying it around straight C, which has a a great deal additional designed ecosystem. But continue to, it’s excellent to see what it usually takes to get a language designed all over a runtime and rubbish assortment up and working on our favored mini micro.

Thanks [Joel] for the idea!