Practical UML Statecharts in C/C++, 2nd Edition

Introduction

Almost all computer systems in general, and embedded systems in particular, are event-driven, which means that they continuously wait for the occurrence of some external or internal event such as a time tick, an arrival of a data packet, a button press, or a mouse click. After recognizing the event, such systems react by performing the appropriate computation that may include manipulating the hardware or generating “soft” events that trigger other internal software components. (That's why event-driven systems are alternatively called reactive systems.) Once the event handling is complete, the software goes back to waiting for the next event.

You are undoubtedly accustomed to the basic sequential control, in which a program waits for ...