Some of this spirit continues to exist at the lowest levels of embedded, but most of it is long gone. Even the cheapest microcontrollers are now powerful enough and growing fast enough that in a year or two micropython will fit. :/

The real programmers are dying too. Mel died in 2018: https://melsloop.com/docs/the-story-of-mel/pages/mel-kaye-cv

Yes. The Story of Mel.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=the+story+of+mel