A lot of people criticize iOS and Android for making it harder to learn the low levels of how computers work. I’ve got to say, though, modern microcontrollers are so cheap and powerful it’s unreal. My first microcontroller was a 4 MHz PIC with 16 *bytes* of RAM and 256 *bytes* of storage for the program.

Today, for $19, you can get a pack of three ESP32 S3 units. Two primary cores at 240 MHz, a third core at ~20 MHz, 512 kB of RAM, 384 kB of main storage, 8 MB of SPI flash, all kinds of built-in peripherals (UARTs, SPI, I2C, even WiFi and Bluetooth). Learning how computers actually work has never been easier for people who want to know!