Programming the Internet of Things

Foreword

The Internet of Things has the potential to become one of the most disruptive technological advances of our time. With more than 50 billion devices expected to come online over the next few years, the IoT will have a profound impact on every industry. Exciting new connected devices and supporting systems will be developed to solve problems in medicine, transportation, agriculture, housing, energy, manufacturing, and more. Many of these projects are already under way, and most companies are eager to expand their products and capabilities to leverage the IoT.

Built on advancements and cost reductions in sensing, metrology, microelectronics, wireless communications, cloud services, and the expansion of the World Wide Web, the Internet of Things is at the intersection of multiple technologies developed over the last few decades. While this breadth introduces several challenges, it also offers the opportunity to architect and develop software across traditional career boundaries. The IoT pushes practitioners outside of their comfort zones to explore the full spectrum of software engineering. In most cases, a solution touches all levels of the stack: starting with bare-metal code on constrained devices, then aggregated through more capable edge nodes before heading northbound to the cloud. This means the designer must have enough expertise at each level to understand the protocols, languages, patterns, and frameworks available to build a stable and scalable system.

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