Making Embedded Systems

Preface

I love embedded systems. The first time a motor turned because I told it to, I was hooked. I quickly moved away from pure software and into a field where I can touch the world. Just as I was leaving software, the seminal work was done on design patterns.^[1] My team went through the book, discussing the patterns and where we’d consider using them. As I got more into embedded systems, I found compilers that couldn’t handle C++ inheritance, processors with absurdly small amounts of memory in which to implement the patterns, and a whole new set of problems where design patterns didn’t seem applicable. But I never forgot the idea that there are patterns to the way we do engineering. By learning to recognize the patterns, we can use the robust solutions over and over. So much of this book looks at standard patterns and offers some new ones for embedded system development. I’ve also filled in a number of chapters with other useful information not found in most books.

About This Book

After seeing embedded systems in medical devices, race cars, airplanes, children’s toys, and gunshot location systems, I’ve found a lot of commonalities. There are a lot of things I wish I knew then on how to go about designing and implementing software for an embedded system. This book contains some of what I’ve learned. It is a book about good software design in resource-constrained environments.

It is also a book about understanding what interviewers look for when you apply for an embedded systems job. ...