Page 46 - The Art of Designing Embedded Systems

Disciplined Development 33

software; almost all of the lessons are directly applicable to firmware
development.
How does an elderly, near-retirement doctor practice medicine? In
the same way he did before World War 11, before penicillin? Hardly. Doc-
tors spend a lifetime learning. They understand that lunch time is always
spent with a stack of journals.
Like doctors, we practice in a dynamic, changing environment. Un-
less we master better ways of producing code we’ll be the metaphorical
equivalent of the sixteenth-century medicine man, trepanning instead of
practicing modern brain surgery.
Learn new techniques. Experiment with them. Any idiot can write
code; the geniuses are those who find better ways of writing code.

One of the more intriguing approaches to creating a discipline
of software engineering is the Personal Software Process, a method
created by Watts Humphrey. An original architect of the CMM,
Humphrey realized that developers need a method they can use now,
without waiting for the CMM revolution to take hold at their com-
pany. His vision is not easy, but the benefits are profound. Check out
his A Discipline for Software Engineering, Watts S. Humphrey,
1995. Addison-Wesley.

Summary

With a bit of age (but less than anticipated maturity), it’s interesting
to look back and to see how most of us form personalities very early in life,
personalities with strengths and weaknesses that largely stay intact over the
course of decades.
The embedded community is composed of mostly smart, well-edu-
cated people, many of whom believe in some sort of personal improve-
ment. But, are we successful? How many of us live up to our New Year’s
resolutions?
Browse any bookstore. The shelves groan under self-help books.
How many people actually get helped, or at least helped to the point of
being done with a particular problem? Go to the diet section-I think there
are more diets being sold than the sum total of national excess pounds.
People buy these books with the best of intentions, yet every year Amer-
ica gets a little heavier.
Our desires and plans for self-improvement-at home or at the of-
fice-are among the more noble human characteristics. The reality is that