Add doc for Week 08 - Explore other platforms

docs/assignments/week08/embedded-programming.md

 #Embedded Programming
 
 Group assignment: compare the performance and development workflows for other architectures
+
+## Checking out other tools and platforms
+
+- extra credit: try other programming languages and development environments
+
+During the development phase of this week's assignment, I wanted to explore other environments and tools.
+
+These are 3 of the environments I explored:
+
+- Platform.io on VSCode (on linux) ⭐
+- VSCodium
+- IntelliJ IDEA (on linux) ⭐
+- CLion
+- Arduino emulation on [Wokwi](https://wokwi.com) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
+
+### VSCode (linux) using the Platform.io plugin
+
+#### How to install Platform.io on Linux Mint
+
+Download [VSCode for Linux](https://az764295.vo.msecnd.net/stable/c722ca6c7eed3d7987c0d5c3df5c45f6b15e77d1/code_1.65.2-1646927742_amd64.deb)
+from the official site. and install it using apt
+
+```shell
+sudo apt install ./code_1.65.2-1646927742_amd64.deb
+```
+
+Platform.io uses [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux) (Microsoft) + the _Platform.io
+plugin_ to provide an IDE
+
+Platform.io can be installed (as a standalone toolchain), but it does not seem to support SAMD11C [[1](https://registry.platformio.org/tools/platformio/framework-arduino-megaavr-megatinycore)]
+, [[2](http://fabacademy.org/2021/labs/agrilab/students/theo-gautier/assignments/week09/)].
+
+![](week08-embedded-programming/platformio-install-atmel.png)
+
+While it supports some Atmel boards, it does not support SAM-D11C.
+
+### VSCodium (linux)
+
+VSCodium seems to be a modified version of Visual Studio Code, with no telemetry (nice). Despite this nice gesture, it
+has even worse support for Platform.io.
+
+![](week08-embedded-programming/vscodium.png)
+
+It can't even find the platform.io plugin. So it got uninstalled in less than 10 minutes.
+
+### IntelliJ IDEA (linux)
+
+[IntelliJ IDEA](https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/?fromIDE=#section=linux) would have been my preferred method of
+working, since I'm familiar with the JetBrains family of IDEs. I could find a basic wrapper plugin that allows cpp_check
+to do basic syntax checking, but nothing beyond that.
+
+Installing cpp-check to validate cpp code
+
+```shell
+sudo apt install cppcheck cppcheck-gui
+```
+
+It also requires you to install cpp_check manually, so the plugin is basically a wrapper that can highlight lines of
+code in the editor, but not much else (no refactor capabilities, no syntax highlight or prediction, et...)
+
+### CLion with official Plugins for Arduino
+
+I would have liked to try out [CLion](https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/download/#section=linux).
+
+It seems to have better plugin support, from the official
+marketplace: [Official Arduino Support plugin](https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/11301-arduino-support)
+
+Unfortunately, since it has no community edition, I didn't want to start the 30-day trial just yet, but I might look
+into it in the future (final project?), when I need heavy IDE support.
+
+I've been a big fan of JetBrains for years, and I'm expecting that this combo packs a bunch of goodies out of the box.
+
+### Emulating the circuit with wokwi.com
+
+![](week08-embedded-programming/emulation-in-wokwi-dot-com.png)
+
+See a [simplified simulation at wokwi.com](https://wokwi.com/projects/326858429404545618)
+
+This was a really nice discovery:
+
+It allows us to emulate LOTS (not everything) of the behaviour of our board (not just the microcontroller but also the
+components attached to it!) and it provides _semi realtime_ simulations of the behaviour and the outputs.
+
+It could not emulate everything perfectly:
+
+1. In order to generate pseudo-random numbers, we need to initialize the random generator with a seed.
+    1. The emulator was able to simulate a random seed with faking noise into an analog unused pin, but on the real
+       board, the seed always ended up being the same and the sequence of "random" numbers was always the same, making
+       the game a bit boring.
+2. The emulator assumes infinite memory. so the first iterations of the program were too large to fit in memory and
+   would get `region 'FLASH' overflowed` errors.