content: hard floppy  Those are called "diskettes". They are 3.5 inch diskettes with either a 720KB or 1.44MB storage capacity depending on whether they are normal or high density. Any seasoned programmer who didn't get their start in coding with web apps and phone app garbage should be capable of writing efficient code that can fit into small media. Embedded programming has to be efficient and highly optimized for space by its nature. You can't use frameworks or libraries that bloat your code. You have to keep it to the absolutely necessary functions and code it with optimized methods. The programmers of today would fail at this because they rely heavily on stringing together countless frameworks and libraries and using a massive tool chain of moving parts that make everything shit in the end. A good C compiler and a text editor is all an embedded systems programmer needs, besides sound logic and actual programming talent.