Hackaday · Creativity & design

Bare Metal Programming Made Accessible

Sylvain Huet presented at Hackaday Europe 2026 on simplifying bare metal programming, advocating for transparent, understandable software platforms built from the ground up.

Bare metal programming runs software directly on hardware without an OS, offering direct access but lacking OS features. Huet contrasted early computing's simplicity with modern complexity.

He showed how a Raspberry Pi can run bare-metal for displays, reducing reliance on external updates and dependencies, enhancing transparency.

The 'Minimacy' project aims for 'new minimalism,' where a single developer can grasp the entire project.

Huet discussed the 'low-level paradox,' where complex tasks rely on external libraries, obscuring processes.

The Minimacy Machine uses the Raspberry Pi RP2350 and Minimacy language for fewer dependencies and better understanding.

The Minimacy VM offers near bare-metal access with portability. The system is open source, written in under 900 kB of C.

Huet suggested stripping abstraction layers simplifies development, though bare metal isn't for all applications.

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