461: Am I the Cow in This Scenario?

Chris and Elecia discuss the pros and cons of completing one project or starting a dozen. 

Elecia’s 2nd edition of Making Embedded Systems is coming out in March. (Preview is on O’Reilly’s Learning System.) She’s working on a companion repository that is already filled with links and goodies: github.com/eleciawhite/making-embedded-systems. 

If you’d like to know more about signal processing, check out DSPGuide.com aka The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing By Steven W. Smith, Ph.D. And as noted in last week’s newsletter, there is an interesting overlap between smoothies and the Fourier Transform. 

Giang Vinh Loc used  Charles Lohr’s RISCV on Arduino UNO to boot Linux (in 16 hours). 

We also talked a bit about Greg Wilson’s recent episode with Elecia (Embedded 460: I Don’t Care What Your Math Says).

Transcript

Nordic Semiconductor empowers wireless innovation, by providing hardware, software, tools and services that allow developers to create the IoT products of tomorrow. Learn more about Nordic Semiconductor at nordicsemi.com, check out the DevAcademy at academy.nordicsemi.com and interact with the Nordic Devzone community at devzone.nordicsemi.com.

211: 4 weeks, 3 days (Repeat)

Dennis Jackson spoke with us about making the career shift from software to embedded.

Dennis buys James Grenning’s Test Driven Development in Embedded C for his new hires and often recommends Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems. His tip that everyone should know was “Learn make!” and he has a reference for that: Why Use Make.

He suggested Joel Spolsky’s reading lists from Joel On Software, even the ones that don’t obviously apply.

Additional suggested-reading articles:

• 30 Pitfalls for Real Time Systems (part 1 and part 2)

• Rules for defensive C programming

• Why are you still using C

• What every computer scientist should know about floating point arithmetic

• The Power of Ten -- 10 Rules for Writing Safety Critical Code

In his previous appearance on Embedded (#94: Don’t Be Clever), we talked about code complexity and measuring cyclomatic complexity. At that time he wanted a tool to monitor the code’s status. He has since found one: pmccabe.

10: Hands Off, Baby (Repeat)

Jen Costillo (@rebelbotjen) joins Elecia White to discuss the secret parts of C, keywords that only embedded software engineers seem to know about.

Jen and Elecia talk about interviewing and why these keywords make good questions for finding folks who use the language to its full potential. On the show they mention a list of embedded interview questions with answers. (Note: Elecia's book has many excellent interview questions and what interviewers look for when they ask them.)

Producer Christopher White sends along a more concise introduction to the often unused register keyword. 

NOTE: This is a repeat episode from before we'd settled on our name. Note that Jen is the co-host of the Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast.

211: 4 weeks, 3 days

Dennis Jackson spoke with us about making the career shift from software to embedded.

Dennis buys James Grenning’s Test Driven Development in Embedded C for his new hires and often recommends Elecia’s Making Embedded Systems. His tip that everyone should know was “Learn make!” and he has a reference for that: Why Use Make.

He suggested Joel Spolsky’s reading lists from Joel On Software, even the ones that don’t obviously apply.

Additional suggested-reading articles:

• 30 Pitfalls for Real Time Systems (part 1 and part 2)

• Rules for defensive C programming

• Why are you still using C

• What every computer scientist should know about floating point arithmetic

• The Power of Ten -- 10 Rules for Writing Safety Critical Code

In his previous appearance on Embedded (#94: Don’t Be Clever), we talked about code complexity and measuring cyclomatic complexity. At that time he wanted a tool to monitor the code’s status. He has since found one: pmccabe.

Dennis currently works at Element Science.

3: Plenty of candy, no guns

​Elecia White and Phil King of Weekend Engineering talk about things a hardware engineer wants software engineers to know. Drifting a bit from topic to topic, they touch on interviewing, oscilloscopes, ways to light hardware on fire, why they work on projects at home and writing novels.

Some links from the show:​

Phil works at Lytro making amazing cameras.​ Elecia and Phil have worked at Leapfrog and ShotSpotter together. Very different products.

Phil's oscilloscope (the one Elecia borrows) is a Tektronix DPO4034.​

At Phil's instigation, Elecia wrote a space opera novel for NaNoWriNo a few years back.​ (If you contact us, you can have a PDF for free. But really, she wrote it in a month, what do you expect? Buy her real book to get the good stuff.)