As I understand it, a microcontroller is like a programmed mini-computer that controls various modules, sensors, etc.?

Question

Microcontrollers

Or made a mistake in his wording of the question?

Answer 1

Roughly speaking, this is a microprocessor with peripherals (it can be serial, ADC, DAC, RAM, ROM, etc.) on one chip. Another sign is the presence of GPIO ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_input/output ).

Answer 2

And I like the outdated name - a single-chip microcomputer. It is very accurate. This is a computer (processor, RAM, ROM, peripherals, etc.) but everything is in one crystal - in one microcircuit.

Answer 3

The history of the issue is this.
First came the transistor.
Then they came up with the idea of ​​combining several transistors on one substrate, integrated circuits appeared.
Then there were separate logical microcircuits from which you can assemble, as from the basis of the processor.
Then integrated microprocessors appeared with external (separate microcircuits) RAM (RAM), ROM (ROM) and peripherals (timers, ADCs, DACs, etc.). I saw the remnants of such boards, they were called microcontrollers, but they were not in the modern sense.
And finally, in one integrated circuit, it was possible to place a microprocessor (RISC), RAM (RAM) and ROM (ROM) memory and peripheral units (timers, ADC, DAC, UART, I2C, UART, DMA (DMA), etc.). Thanks to Texas Instruments.
In simple words, this is an ordinary computer (in the usual view) compressed into one chip without a monitor, power supply, optical drive, sound card, but with a processor (though not CISC but RISC), a hard drive, RAM, chips and interface cards.
Well , now the FPGA can contain the MC, as a special case.