Holy shit (sorry)! You really know your stuff, or at the very least, I don’t know my stuff! I’ll keep in mind the stuff you said about the ESP32 and the ATMEGA, but I was more so referring to the editions of those dev boards that use the RP2040!

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/18288 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/17745

After reading a bit more, it seems that pretty much the only difference is the IO and other supporting hardware besides just the chips. If someone (me) were working on a project where solutions like these particularly-powerful microcontrollers are required, when would it make more sense to use one of these pre-made boards for computing rather than making your own PCB designs including the chip? Is it mostly for projects where extremely compact form factors (and/or other shenanigans) aren’t necessary?

Oh wow! this is a lot of great detail! is Rust at all useful for embedded applications, or am i essentially restricted to C/C++? Is Adafruit also a good resource or not as much as the others? Also, besides the obvious differences in form factor and ease of use, what’s the objective difference between the RP2040 chip, and, for example, Sparkfun’s “Pro Micro” or “Thing Plus”, or is the ease-of-use by itself the main selling point?

EEVblog looks great! lots of material there! glibg10b mentioned the book “The Art of Electronics”, is this a good source too?

Probably stuff like microcontrollers/embedded applications! (I’d like to think) I already know much of the higher-level concepts of computers and how they work, I’ve messed around with programming in Rust or C#, I’ve been daily-driving linux for a few years, I’ve wrote software to do basic tasks for me, but my end goal is to apply my experiences to the physical world. I know very little about the basics of electronics, the physics of it, why PCBs are designed the way they are, etc.

I guess I’d like resources for the lowest-of-the-low-level stuff? Like “How electricity in general works”, “Use-cases for resistors”, “Why you sometimes see capacitors in weird places”, etc.

I’m just now realizing how vague my original question was? i’m sorry about that haha.

I don’t have a particular goal in mind though, i just think this stuff is cool, and I’d like to at some point be able to sit down and make something wacky or useful with KiCad/similar.