Oooh! Just left a top-level comment but I thought I'd reiterate somewhere you might see it - this is a stellar writeup. It's a rare pleasure to find such a technically comprehensive breakdown of embedded firmware on HN.
8051 is the cockroach of embedded systems. Bizarrely resilient, and absolutely disgusting. My very first firmware job (erm, internship) was taking a Cortex-M0+ and making it serve as a pin-for-pin replacement for an 8051. Many crimes against software humanity were committed.
8051 is the cockroach of embedded systems. Bizarrely resilient, and absolutely disgusting. My very first firmware job (erm, internship) was taking a Cortex-M0+ and making it serve as a pin-for-pin replacement for an 8051. Many crimes against software humanity were committed.