Rating: 
Summary: Hunter S. Thompson has written an Embedded Systems Book!
Review: This is a really poorly written and poorly organized collection of ramblings from an embedded systems "expert." Each topic is covered at a grossly superficial level and most sections consist of short random thoughts. Here's a typical paragraph (from the 2 pages on real time operating systems)."Improvements to these tools come almost daily. Keep on top of the field to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs." Speaking of dinosaurs, the author's favorite tool for debugging and performance analysis seems to be the oscilloscope. I get the feeling that the author "wrote" this book by talking into a tape recorder while in an LSD haze on the way to Las Vegas. BTW, the page count is 243 and not 352 claimed in the advertising for this book. Thankfully, the editors saw fit to trash at least a portion of this book. My only regret in writing this review is that the Amazon rating service doesn't offer the option of giving 0 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Embedded Systems Guru Knowledge Base
Review: This text is obviously a distillation of many years of experience in the field. I have programmed enough ISR's and programmable devices to know that it is very good advise indeed. The book, however, is not for the beginner. His assumed audience are people who are already in the field and would like to take advantage someone with greater experience. The book is loaded with hard learned nuggets of wisdom that are less likely to be found in classroom textbooks. He has something to offer both software and hardware types(I'm software). For example, the advise about software partitioning, ISR development and debugging, and device programming is excellent, and for hardware types the advise on building boards that are both software and hardware debuggable and the myriad tips on finding problems from the common to the obscure will be appreciated. He also provides suggested project management guidelines that help in getting functionality operating as quickly as possible, and, from my point of view, guidance on how to deal with irrational schedules and managements that are reluctant to provide adequate project resources. I appreciated expecially his citing research that quiet private offices provide the single greatest boost to engineering productivity. Probably the only thing I found lacking in the book was a Bibliography of other book references and useful web links.
Rating:
Summary: Embedded Systems Guru Knowledge Base
Review: This text is obviously a distillation of many years of experience in the field. I have programmed enough ISR's and programmable devices to know that it is very good advise indeed. The book, however, is not for the beginner. His assumed audience are people who are already in the field and would like to take advantage someone with greater experience. The book is loaded with hard learned nuggets of wisdom that are less likely to be found in classroom textbooks. He has something to offer both software and hardware types(I'm software). For example, the advise about software partitioning, ISR development and debugging, and device programming is excellent, and for hardware types the advise on building boards that are both software and hardware debuggable and the myriad tips on finding problems from the common to the obscure will be appreciated. He also provides suggested project management guidelines that help in getting functionality operating as quickly as possible, and, from my point of view, guidance on how to deal with irrational schedules and managements that are reluctant to provide adequate project resources. I appreciated expecially his citing research that quiet private offices provide the single greatest boost to engineering productivity. Probably the only thing I found lacking in the book was a Bibliography of other book references and useful web links.
Rating:
Summary: Very good.. but not for beginners
Review: Though this book is not very big, it is filled with gems that apply not only to embedded systems programming, but to general software engineering practices. Ganssle's writing is readable, humorous, and very short on fluff, as readers of his email newsletters and ESJ writings have come to expect.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent overview of good programming practices
Review: Though this book is not very big, it is filled with gems that apply not only to embedded systems programming, but to general software engineering practices. Ganssle's writing is readable, humorous, and very short on fluff, as readers of his email newsletters and ESJ writings have come to expect.
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