53: Being a Grownup Engineer
Jack Ganssle, author of 'The Art of Designing Embedded Systems' and long-time embedded industry expert, argues that firmware engineers must adopt disciplined engineering practices rather than relying on 'heroic' hacking. He discusses the necessity of requirements gathering, design reviews, code inspections, and rigorous testing to ensure safety and reliability, citing the Toyota unintended acceleration case as a failure of process. Ganssle advocates for measuring metrics like bug rates and lines of code to benchmark performance, and critiques the misuse of Linux in deeply embedded systems and the confusion between the maker movement and professional engineering.