i do hope this question fits here, otherwise sorry.
I have a physical alarm clock (5$) which has been programmed for snooze, light effects, etc.
Generally, all these devices like calculator, hi-fi-system (with display), etc. How and in which language did they programm them?
Do all of them require a small processor? ...or is there even a small brother of a processor which is so damn cheap and fast to do the easy job?
Can/Could these devices been reprogrammed by us for customization? Which programming language?
it really makes me wonder.
thanks for your time
They're not programmed in C#, that's for sure :) There's always an assembly language, of course. For higher-level language support, C is quite popular. The larger and more complex the chip, the more different compilers will be available for it.
Here is a link to a simple tutorial on how to program one of the many, many kinds of available small microprocessors. Larger cousins of these tiny Atmel processors form the heart of the Arduino, a very easy-to-use prototyping board that you can program in a simple Java-like language that's compiled down to Atmel assembler.
We all have to start someplace.