Intended Audience
This is a book about programming embedded systems in C. As such, it assumes that the reader already has some programming experience and is at least familiar with the syntax of the C language. It also helps if you have some familiarity with basic data structures, such as linked lists. The book does not assume that you have a great deal of knowledge about computer hardware, but it does expect that you are willing to learn a little bit about hardware along the way. This is, after all, a part of the job of an embedded programmer.
While writing this book, we had two types of readers in mind. The first reader is a beginner—much as we were once. He has a background in computer science or engineering and a few years of programming experience. The beginner is interested in writing embedded software for a living but is not sure just how to get started. After reading the first several chapters, he will be able to put his programming skills to work developing simple embedded programs. The rest of the book will act as a reference for the more advanced topics encountered in the coming months and years of his career.
The second reader is already an embedded systems programmer. She is familiar with embedded hardware and knows how to write software for it but is looking for a reference book that explains key topics. Perhaps the embedded systems programmer has experience only with assembly language programming and is relatively new to C. In that case, the book will teach her how to ...