One mind-blowing experience for me:

I can take my parser combinator library that I use for high-level compiler parsers, and use that same library in a no-std setting and compile it to a micro-controller, and deploy that as a high-performance protocol parser in an embedded environment. Exact same library! Just with fewer String and more &'static str.

So toying around with compilers translates my skill-set rather well into doing embedded protocol parsers.