Ask HN: Going low-level – what to learn next?

Look at how to bootstrap a compiler, kernel etc from source when you don't have any binaries for compilers, kernels etc.

https://bootstrappable.org/ https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap/ https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Stage0

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned mobile yet. While native mobile works through the Android/iOS API, it's often quite close to the minimum abstraction level.

Here's a doc you can dig around with https://source.android.com/docs/core

You get a high level overview, then it explains how everything connects right down to the hardware. It's open source too, so you can go in there and poke around.

If you want something that can make money, I'd say look at camera and Bluetooth, because these are the things that need the most customization. Neural network API could see a lot of use in the future too.

But there's plenty of fascinating stuff, like how it renders fonts, how it handles hearing aids, and so on.

Edit: TIL Android has a category of 'rich haptics', where it gives tiny haptic feedback when you swipe your finger across a surface or to the beat of music. Very few app devs know this, so it's not integrates well into apps.

Lua is one of the most amazing bits of programming tech you can use... I have done all sorts of crazy things with it, from applications-with-databases to realtime scientific analysis, games engines and games ahoy, simple automation tooling for devops, and more. I recently decided to sit down and organize a few hundred directories, each with more than 20,000+ files in them, and I've now built a system that my colleagues are asking about installing for themselves..

Its just such a great tool, please don't deny yourself this wonderful experience. Get the VM, put it in something - or find a VM somewhere in something already, and have a lot of fun. And don't forget to make sure you know what a sparse array is, and why pairs() and why ipairs() .. you'll be glad you did!

PS - don't fall for the hype, you can do someTable[0] = "first", someTable[1] = "second" all you like .. :)

> with just as much low-level hooks as you might need

eBPF is great for some things and is "easier" for some things but kernel modules are able to do _way_ more by design.