alt Hacker NewsObviously TFA is satire/tongue in cheek and while you can do all sorts of awesome stuff with a 555 you can't patch those implementations without physically rewiring them which in many cases means throwing out the board and fabbing a new one, whereas a microcontroller-based board can often be fixed with a simple jtag debugger.
So, yeah, 555 timers are cool and doing things with analog ICs is groovy but there's a reason everyone just stuffs a small microcontroller in places where we used to just stuff a 555, and it's maintainability.
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nippoo • today at 6:40 AM
And price. A PY32 is about $0.08 in quantity and can do a lot more than a 555 - which is at least 3 times more expensive...
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Two thoughts on situations where the 555 may be preferable, if anyone has experience how these compare :
1. Low-noise applications. I’d naively expect the 555 to be less noisy than a clocked digital microcontroller, though it’s been awhile since I’ve worked in this space.
2. Low power applications. How does latent power draw compare between a 555 and a typical low power microcontroller?