Two must read books to become a productive C++ Arduino programmer

juin 17, 2023 / Arduino, C++ / Par / 2 minutes de lecture

You develop Arduino applications and program in C++. You probably discovered that, as the program’s size increases, debugging time gets out-of-hand. This is what happened to me. The causes were inattention, a hobbyist mindset, not mastering C++ concepts, not using the correct C++ mechanisms, and more. As I progressed, I took notes on:

  • The nature of the mistakes I made and why,
  • Concepts I did not master which I needed to clarify,
  • Constructs I had never used which eased programming algorithms.
I also developed software tools (frameworks) to modularize the application, replaced the Arduino IDE with MicrochipStudio (AtmelStudio) for hardware-based debugging, and learned how to use MicrochipStudio (ATmelStudio) for hardware-based debugging (a breeze) and Visual Studio 2022 with Visual Micro, my main Arduino development tool since it is a truly professional development tool.

To make a long story short, I wrote two books which should help C++ Arduino programmers be more productive and produce more robust code. These books(publication expected Juley/August 2023) are:

Pragmatic C++ Arduino Programming:

  • Subtle C++ concepts (pointers, pass by reference, memory structure…).
  • Full coverage of the C++ preprocessor.
  • The PROGMEM framework helps you save RAM by enabling storage of read-only variables in flash memory.
  • C++ and Macro Gotchas C++  – there are so many of them, both when creating macros and when creating C++ code.

Defensive C++ Arduino Programming:

  • Good programming practices – enhance productivity by migrating from a hobbyist mindset to a professional mindset.
  • Tools you may use to program Arduino with (Arduino IDE V1 & V2, Microchip studio previously referred to as Atmel Studio, Visual Studio with Visual Micro, and PlatformIO).
  • Hardware-based debugging tools, namely MicrochipStudio with the ATmega XMini hardware debugging boards.
  • Regular Expressions, Perl programming, and Awk programming.
  • Seventeen C++ frameworks to help you avoid reinventing the wheel as you develop your application. These frameworks, fully tested, are available via Dropbox. The following link enables downloading the entire set DropBox framework. This link currently does not contain code, just the directories. It will be updated upon publishing the books.

These books will be available on Amazon in both print and digital versions – tentative release July/August 2023.  Search Delsol, Pragmatic C++, Defensive C++.

For more info on these books go to the dedicated C++ Arduino Programming page.