By popular request…
Several people have mentioned these topics to me recently, as being something they’d like to know more about. All of it is available from various textbooks of course, but it’s often buried deeply in more elaborate chapters. It seems like a good idea to single these out, especially if you’re quite fluent in programming a higher-level language other than C/C++.
Interestingly, all these topics turn out to be related in some way to memory maps, such as this somewhat arbitrary example from Wikipedia:
Low level programming is all about wrestling with such details, very “close to the silicon”.
The other topics which tend to trip people up coming from JavaScript, Python, PHP, Java, etc. are about how bits, bytes, and words can be manipulated, how to deal with memory areas for arrays and buffers, how types work in C/C++, and how a CPU copes with urgency:
- Low-level programming– Wed
- Lots of bits and pieces– Thu
- Pointer addressing– Fri
- Casting types in C/C++– Sat
- We interrupt this program– Sun
I’ll keep the articles concise and only touch on the aspects relevant to embedded programs.
… but feel free to take a week off from reading this weblog if you already know all this!
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