AmTek Design LLC
AmTek Design LLC
Embedded Systems Design
Links and Other Resources
This is a short list of some of the resources and tools I've
found useful over the years. Consider it a work in progress.
Books
Many of the books on my bookshelf are published by O'Reilly. The quality and content vary
from good to excellent. In the early days of the open source
movement, they were the guiding light and the helping hand.
Best Practices
- Jack Ganssle. Jack writes
about embedded development, based on years of experience in the
trenches. Anything he writes is gold. Subscribe to his newsletter,
The Embedded
Muse.
- Andrew Hunt, David Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer.
Solid, practical wisdom. Unfortunately I've found some of the other
books in the Pragmatic series to be disappointing, but your mileage
may vary.
- Steve McConnell, Code Complete
Hardware
- American Radio Relay League, The ARRL Handbook. Issued
annually, this ham radio reference has lots of practical advice for
anyone involved in electronic design.
- Bonnie Baker, A Baker's Dozen: Real Analog Solutions for
Digital Designers. Written specifically for those of us on the
"dark side".
- John Catsoulis, Designing Embedded Hardware
- Paul Horowitz, Winfield Hill, The Art of
Electronics
Languages
- Kip Irvine, Assembly Language for Intel-Based
Computers, third edition. There's a fourth edition out now,
but the third includes MASM 6.11.
- Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, The C Programming
Lanuage, second edition. The only book on C I've ever
needed.
Tools
Subversion
Subversion is a
version control system (VCS) intended as a replacement for CVS.
Everybody should use a VCS.
- Garrett Rooney, Practical Subversion, Apress, 2005. A
good adjunct to the O'Reilly book (below).
- Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, C. Michael Pilato,
Version Control with Subversion, O'Reilly, 2005. This is
the Subversion bible. O'Reilly publishes a print version, but for
the latest, grab the free
online version, available in both HTML and PDF.
Unix Philosophy
- Jon Lasser, Think Unix
- Eric Raymond (aka esr), The Art of Unix
Programming
- Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning...Was the Command
Line
Writing
To be able to write well is just as important as having good
coding or hardware design skills.
- The Chicago Manual of Style
- William Strunk Jr., E.B. White, The Elements of
Style
- William Zinsser, On Writing Well
Magazines
- Circuit Cellar
- The best magazine for embedded developers who still remember
which end of a soldering iron to hold. Circuit Cellar,
started by Steve Ciarcia of Byte fame, provides a rich
collection of hands-on articles for the professional and serious
hobbyist. You can subscribe to it in paper, PDF, or both.
- EDN
- Written for engineers, this magazine has a mix of technical and
news articles. I find Bonnie Baker's Baker's Best column
and the Design Ideas section the most consistently
useful.
- EETimes
- A news magazine that's probably the best source for what's
happening in the industry.
Manufacturers
Not a comprehensive list by any means.
- Atmel
- Makers of the 8-bit AVR microcontrollers and ARM
processors.
- Microchip
- Manufacturer of the PIC series of microcontrollers.
- Zilog
- Long live the Z80 (and its descendents)!
Parts Suppliers
Training
- Construx
- If you have a worn copy of Code Complete on your
bookshelf, you know who Steve McConnell is. This is his company,
whose mission is "advancing the art and science of commercial
software engineering". There are some good resources here, as well
as training.
- Microchip's MASTERS
conference
- Held each summer, the conference is three-and-a-half days of
technical presentations on Microchip products, applications, and
general design practices. Highly recommended.
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