[exelius]

Hell, Java is too much of a pain to build and deploy (especially for something like this that requires custom hardware). I built a similar project 2 years ago in Python and it's good enough.

Embedded hardware still has its place though. General purpose kernels like this can't handle timing-sensitive operations well, so there will always be a need for small and tight real-time programming. Other solutions exist such as binding a separate microcontroller to the host OS, but they're clunky and require additional drivers/libraries.

But you're right, IoT will end up being quad-core devices running some version of Linux because it's an easily accessible development platform that provides TCP/IP and a bazillion actively maintained drivers. And why not? The silicon is getting cheaper every day.