If we accept the premise that an embedded engineer is made rather
than born, then how does one go about making a good one? The authors
of this book Exploring C for Microcontrollers: A Hands-on Approach are
certainly “good ones”. Not only do they explore some of the influences
that shaped themselves but they also try to shape “would-be” embedded
engineers. Research and developmental activities in embedded systems
has grown in a significant proportion in the recent past. Embedded software
design is not new to the world, but with the changing time, it
has gained considerable momentum in the recent past, and many young
engineers are strongly inclined to pursue their future in this field. The
book is mainly targeted to these engineers who would like to understand
in great depth the synergetic combination of hardware and software.
The book is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1 introduces a brief
background about micro-controllers and explains how they are embedded
into products commercially available in the market to emphasize the
importance of these in the daily life of mankind. It also gives an insight
into the architectural details and embedded system concepts for students’
projects to motivate them into this exciting field. The rest of the
book concentrates on software development. The integrated development
environment (IDE) is introduced in Chapter 2. Again the screen shots
and step-by-step procedure will certainly make the students and engineers
fully understand the development process. Chapter 3 differentiates
the embedded C paradigm from the conventional ANSI C. Again
the authors explain how to successfully overcome the memory and time
constraints while developing an embedded C program. Chapter 4 gives
an overview of program development for on-chip resources for MCS51
family of microcontrollers. Chapters 5–8 are devoted to live case studies.
The book has come out with an elegant presentation to aspiring
students and engineers from the teaching experience and technical
knowledge the authors have put over a long time in this field. I strongly
recommend this book for intermediate programmers, electronics, electrical,
instrumentation engineers or any individual who is strongly inclinedto take up his or her career in embedded C programming. I am sure the
reader will experience learning embedded programming by example and
learning by doing. Last but not the least, this book will certainly be a
value addition to the world of embedded programming.