Embedded Software and Coding Standards
Hardware designers, especially those who design custom power supplies must know coding or at least have a rudimentary knowledge of coding to succeed at their work. Many of them know how to code but are not especially good at it. They end up spending a lot of time debugging the code they’ve written.
They expect their code to resemble the code written by professional coders. But this is a mistake. Professional coders are careful to minimize white space characters. This gives the impression that the coder knew what he was doing.
The downside is, this type of code looks cryptic and is hard to read. This becomes a problem if you are working for a large company. There embedded designers have to use the coding standard recommended by the company. If you are in a small company, you are pretty much allowed to use the coding standard you want. But there is good news.
There are some special books to help embedded engineers code. One of them is ‘Embedded C Coding Standard’. Let’s not forget the style of coding is heavily influenced by the coder’s personal preference. The ability of the coding style to reduce potential bugs is also an important determinant.
