An interesting area of a code base to examine is error handling. I’ve found that many firmware and embedded software projects don’t do an excellent...
Read More >>>Category Archives: C Concepts
4 Tactics to Unit Test RTOS Tasks
More than 50% of all embedded software projects use Real-time Operating Systems (RTOS). Unfortunately, using an RTOS can pose several problems to developers looking to...
Read More >>>A Simple Script to Automate C Module Creation
During development, a very common activity is to create new C modules. Creating a new C module often comes with a bunch of repetitive work....
Read More >>>The Ternary Operator Revisited
Several years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled Ternary Operator vs. if/else, which was supposed to be an interesting comparison between the two, except...
Read More >>>3 Tips for Speeding Up Interrupt Handlers
Embedded software developers today are a bit spoiled. Many microcontrollers come with an ecosystem that includes peripheral drivers, an RTOS, middleware and even example application...
Read More >>>There is No Hardware
My favorite line from the Matrix is that “there is no spoon”, and today that is a wise statement for embedded software developers to take to heart. Embedded software developers traditionally are hardware centric, believing...
Read More >>>3 Strategies for Handling Errors in Embedded Software
It’s very tempting to assume that a system is going to behave as perfectly in the field as it does on the engineering bench. During...
Read More >>>3 Explicit Programming Tips C Developers Should Follow
You know what they say when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME. That’s exactly what developers are doing when they...
Read More >>>Is the war between C and C++ Over?
Back when I was an engineering student and a budding young engineer, it wasn’t unusual to open (yes physically open) the latest edition of embedded...
Read More >>>Using Callbacks with Interrupts
On a weekly basis, I receive a fair number of emails with questions about how to design embedded systems. One question that seems to be...
Read More >>>5 Techniques to Delay Code Execution
An interesting problem that often comes up in embedded software implementation is figuring out how to delay code execution. Sometimes a developer might just want...
Read More >>>7 Steps to Create a Stack Monitor
One of the most painstaking bugs to hunt down in an embedded system is when the stack overflows its boundaries and starts to overwrite memory...
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