Want Reliable Firmware? These 3 Habits Will Get You There

Midway through the year is a great time to pause and take stock of your development practices. What’s working well? What’s slowing you down? And more importantly—what habits could help you finish the year stronger?

You don’t need another short-lived resolution. What you need are sustainable habits.

For embedded software developers, the right habits can dramatically improve your speed, reliability, and confidence. Whether you’re leading a team or deep in the code yourself, here are three powerful habits worth building starting today:

Habit #1 – Continuous Education

Embedded software is a fast-moving field, even if we sometimes lag behind trends in the broader software world. Technologies evolve, tools change, and expectations shift.

It’s easy to settle into the same processes year after year. But that’s a fast track to falling behind, eventually becoming irrelevant. To stay sharp, competitive, and in-demand, you must build a habit of continuous learning.

Too many teams treat education as reactive, a tool only used when something breaks or for major initiatives. But continuous education is proactive, a way to prevent issues before they ever arise. It’s a way to prevent 30 years of experience being one year of experience repeated 30 times!

Start small. Schedule regular time to learn. Use resources like:

• Weekly lunch-and-learns
• Technical book clubs
• High-quality YouTube tutorials
• Webinars and virtual events
• Industry conferences
• On-demand training platforms
• White papers and case studies

Tip: Block off time on your calendar right now. Make learning non-negotiable. The best engineers I know block out weekly time on their calendars for education.

Habit #2 – Code Reviews (Peer Reviews)

Want fewer bugs and more reliable firmware? Start reviewing your code.

Code reviews are often skipped when deadlines loom, but that’s a mistake. With today’s tools, there’s no excuse not to bake review into your process. It doesn’t have to be complex, either.

Numerous studies over the years have proven that code reviews typically find more than 50% of the bugs before they get into production! But it’s not just about finding bugs, code reviews also:

• Increase collaboration
• Share knowledge amongst the team
• Catch architectural decay or other issues sooner

Start by making merge requests a natural checkpoint for review. Configure your system so that merging requires approval. Then use that moment to evaluate:

• Logical correctness
• Style consistency
• Potential bugs

Keep reviews focused. Studies show that reviewing less than 500 lines at a time is optimal. Large reviews lead to fatigue and missed issues.

Tip: Commit frequently and merge often. Smaller changes = better reviews = better firmware.

Habit #3 – Automate Your Development

Manual work is the enemy of fast, reliable firmware.

You already know the pain if you’ve ever run hundreds of manual tests only to redo them after a small code change. Manual steps are error-prone, tedious, and slow.

The solution? Automate everything you reasonably can.

Automation isn’t just a task. It’s a mindset. Build the habit of constantly asking:

“Can I automate this?”

Look for opportunities in:

• Unit and system testing
• Static analysis and linting
• Documentation generation
• Code metrics and dashboards
• Build and deployment pipelines

Adopting CI/CD can kickstart this shift. With CI/CD, you’ll find it natural to automate builds, enforce code quality checks, and ensure your system is always ready to deploy.

Tip: Don’t wait until “after the deadline” to automate. The right time to build the habit is now, not someday or “once we get through this deadline”.

Final Thoughts

If you want to build faster, smarter firmware, don’t wait for the perfect moment or a new calendar year. Start now, by building the right habits:

• Learn continuously
• Review code intentionally
• Automate relentlessly

Every developer and team has different gaps to close. Maybe your testing process needs work. Maybe your team hasn’t touched CI. Maybe you’ve put off training for too long.

That’s okay. The key is to pick one habit and commit to it. Make a small improvement today and build momentum from there.

Because in embedded systems, consistency beats intensity. Every time.

What habit will you build to level up your firmware development in the back half of this year?