[jodoherty]

Arduino is a nice, but it's still built on the shoulders of tools like GCC, isn't it?

I never owned a computer in the 90s, but my impression was that Cygnus[1] did a lot of work porting GCC and improving it for use in a variety of platforms, including embedded targets. They arguably helped pull GCC into mainstream usage, to the point of almost permanently forking it [2].

Those first 20 years of GCC development were prerequisites for something like Arduino to emerge in the mid-2000s. I'm just not sure we have the equivalent of GCC yet when it comes to synthesis tools.

When it appears, it might be a good opportunity to create a consulting company and drive it forward while also making some money. The key pitch would be improving your ability to maintain and share designs across targets while not having to pay recurring licenses on your tools.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions

[2]: https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History