Arvid Gerstmann 🦀
@arvid.io
Principal Engineer/Architect with 10+ years experience | Rust 🦀 | Platform Engineering, High-Performance Systems | Working with Rust at Amazon
Twitter: twitter.com/arvidgerstmann
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/arvidgerstmann
Blog: arvid.io
Twitter: twitter.com/arvidgerstmann
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/arvidgerstmann
Blog: arvid.io
I never understood why standards are paid. Being part of a standards committee doesn't pay. And the 200 CHF for the PDF won't refinance anything sufficiently. It's simply making adoption more complicated. And for some standards, the final drafts are 99.9% equivalent to the released document (eg C++)
January 10, 2026 at 2:35 PM
I never understood why standards are paid. Being part of a standards committee doesn't pay. And the 200 CHF for the PDF won't refinance anything sufficiently. It's simply making adoption more complicated. And for some standards, the final drafts are 99.9% equivalent to the released document (eg C++)
I don't know what products/code people write that find AI a useful tool, but AI is completely useless for anything novel/out of the ordinary.
Sadly, I find myself reaching for AI only in these circumstances; therefore, I have the opinion that AI coding assistance is beyond useless.
Sadly, I find myself reaching for AI only in these circumstances; therefore, I have the opinion that AI coding assistance is beyond useless.
January 9, 2026 at 11:32 AM
I don't know what products/code people write that find AI a useful tool, but AI is completely useless for anything novel/out of the ordinary.
Sadly, I find myself reaching for AI only in these circumstances; therefore, I have the opinion that AI coding assistance is beyond useless.
Sadly, I find myself reaching for AI only in these circumstances; therefore, I have the opinion that AI coding assistance is beyond useless.
Reposted by Arvid Gerstmann 🦀
For No Reason in Particular Here’s a Bunch of Games Where You Kill Nazis
For No Reason in Particular Here's a Bunch of Games Where You Kill Nazis - Hard Drive
The Nazis are the most despicable scum to ever walk the face of the earth. Thankfully they were defeated in World War... Get the full story
hard-drive.net
January 9, 2026 at 5:07 AM
For No Reason in Particular Here’s a Bunch of Games Where You Kill Nazis
I had ignored KiCad for a long while and stuck with Altium for most projects. However, running Windows on an ARM MacBook was never a great experience. Therefore, I gave KiCad a real chance this week.
As many said, it's brilliant. And will likely replace most uses of Altium for me.
As many said, it's brilliant. And will likely replace most uses of Altium for me.
January 3, 2026 at 9:37 AM
I had ignored KiCad for a long while and stuck with Altium for most projects. However, running Windows on an ARM MacBook was never a great experience. Therefore, I gave KiCad a real chance this week.
As many said, it's brilliant. And will likely replace most uses of Altium for me.
As many said, it's brilliant. And will likely replace most uses of Altium for me.
Reposted by Arvid Gerstmann 🦀
I have the luxury problem that my reflow oven is actually too powerful, and I need to massively derate it.
Testing the reflow oven. The kitchen was converted into a test lab for a while.
December 27, 2025 at 5:30 PM
I have the luxury problem that my reflow oven is actually too powerful, and I need to massively derate it.
Testing the reflow oven. The kitchen was converted into a test lab for a while.
December 27, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Testing the reflow oven. The kitchen was converted into a test lab for a while.
Reposted by Arvid Gerstmann 🦀
gen z sysadmins be like rm -fr
December 23, 2025 at 3:17 PM
gen z sysadmins be like rm -fr
Ditto. Plus FFI. For me the biggest contributor to unsafe code.
Unfortunately, not possible due to pointers semantically being mostly unsafe.
Unfortunately, not possible due to pointers semantically being mostly unsafe.
I think it's probably reasonable to avoid writing unsafe outside of HW drivers (e.g. MMIO access), data structures (sometimes!), and synchronization primitives.
I'm not really a fan "never unsafe", it's just a tool! It has a cost: additional dilligence needed. Sometimes worth it.
I'm not really a fan "never unsafe", it's just a tool! It has a cost: additional dilligence needed. Sometimes worth it.
Do you think it’s realistic to aim for never writing any unsafe code in non-library projects? My semester project was able to do everything with esp-hal and embassy in entirely safe rust, but what if we hadn’t have all the io driver crates we needed?
December 20, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Ditto. Plus FFI. For me the biggest contributor to unsafe code.
Unfortunately, not possible due to pointers semantically being mostly unsafe.
Unfortunately, not possible due to pointers semantically being mostly unsafe.
Reposted by Arvid Gerstmann 🦀
Linkers for embedded kinda suck, no?
Do you work at a big company who could use a new one?
At @tweedegolf.bsky.social we have some amazing people who could build an awesome new embedded linker.
We should talk.
Do you work at a big company who could use a new one?
At @tweedegolf.bsky.social we have some amazing people who could build an awesome new embedded linker.
We should talk.
December 20, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Linkers for embedded kinda suck, no?
Do you work at a big company who could use a new one?
At @tweedegolf.bsky.social we have some amazing people who could build an awesome new embedded linker.
We should talk.
Do you work at a big company who could use a new one?
At @tweedegolf.bsky.social we have some amazing people who could build an awesome new embedded linker.
We should talk.
Anyone has experience with a LumenPnP pick and place machine?
December 20, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Anyone has experience with a LumenPnP pick and place machine?
December 19, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Thunderbolt is brilliant but when you're operating on the absolute limits of what the connection can do, it's wonky. It's still absolutely astonishing that I can connect a 4k@120Hz, a 1440p@120Hz and about 800 USB peripherals over a single cable.
December 18, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Thunderbolt is brilliant but when you're operating on the absolute limits of what the connection can do, it's wonky. It's still absolutely astonishing that I can connect a 4k@120Hz, a 1440p@120Hz and about 800 USB peripherals over a single cable.
If you build a library, for the love of God, don't print anything to stderr or stdout. Return either an error or make the error messages otherwise accessible.
December 17, 2025 at 10:40 AM
If you build a library, for the love of God, don't print anything to stderr or stdout. Return either an error or make the error messages otherwise accessible.
Even though the Harwin M20 Du Pont crimp connectors are dirt cheap, the original Amphenol JST connectors are most definitely worth the money for anything that's not on a super tight budget. The SN-025 tool makes decent enough crimps as well.
December 16, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Even though the Harwin M20 Du Pont crimp connectors are dirt cheap, the original Amphenol JST connectors are most definitely worth the money for anything that's not on a super tight budget. The SN-025 tool makes decent enough crimps as well.
Reposted by Arvid Gerstmann 🦀
New blog post: Testing async logic written with any embedded-hal using a std runtime.
ragnarlab.com/blog/testing...
ragnarlab.com/blog/testing...
Testing Async Logic in Embedded Rust
Using embedded-hal and embedded-hal-async
ragnarlab.com
December 16, 2025 at 11:32 AM
New blog post: Testing async logic written with any embedded-hal using a std runtime.
ragnarlab.com/blog/testing...
ragnarlab.com/blog/testing...
Single file scripts using `uv` - Arvids Blog
A polyglot solution that supports old versions of Linux
arvid.io
December 14, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Germany tries really hard in the last few days to make me move out of country once and for all.
www.heise.de/en/news/Berl...
www.heise.de/en/news/Berl...
Berlin: Police can secretly enter homes for state trojan installation
To collect data from IT systems, investigators in Berlin can secretly search suspects' rooms. This is in a Police Act amendment.
www.heise.de
December 6, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Germany tries really hard in the last few days to make me move out of country once and for all.
www.heise.de/en/news/Berl...
www.heise.de/en/news/Berl...
Snow from snow cannons tastes funny.
December 3, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Snow from snow cannons tastes funny.
Reposted by Arvid Gerstmann 🦀
Amazing! Free Code Signing for Open Source software signpath.org
SignPath Foundation
https://signpath.org
signpath.org
December 1, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Amazing! Free Code Signing for Open Source software signpath.org
Didn't think you could make File IO this complicated.
What a piece of work.
I'll stick with C. I wanted to like Zig. And it's got some nice benefits but the stdlib is not my cup of tea.
What a piece of work.
I'll stick with C. I wanted to like Zig. And it's got some nice benefits but the stdlib is not my cup of tea.
I think I'm going to do this year's Advent of Code in #zig.
December 1, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Didn't think you could make File IO this complicated.
What a piece of work.
I'll stick with C. I wanted to like Zig. And it's got some nice benefits but the stdlib is not my cup of tea.
What a piece of work.
I'll stick with C. I wanted to like Zig. And it's got some nice benefits but the stdlib is not my cup of tea.
I've been looking into Zig more over the last couple of weeks, and I'm asking myself the question of "why?". Zig is neat and all, and the interoperability with C is great; but so is the interoperability with C from Rust, and Rust gives me a big ecosystem, memory safety and great compiler diagnostics
November 30, 2025 at 1:58 PM
I've been looking into Zig more over the last couple of weeks, and I'm asking myself the question of "why?". Zig is neat and all, and the interoperability with C is great; but so is the interoperability with C from Rust, and Rust gives me a big ecosystem, memory safety and great compiler diagnostics
Presented without comment.
November 28, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Presented without comment.