Udemy Class Review: Basics of Embedded C Programming

In today’s modern world, it’s nearly impossible to go through an entire day without interacting with a device with an embedded controller at some point. These low-power devices are in the vast majority of electronics, including vehicles, vending machines, kitchen appliances, and just about everything in between.

A large number of these devices were also programmed using a language known as Embedded C. The Basics of Embedded C Programming course on Udemy we will be looking at today aims to teach you the basics of this language so that you can learn to program your own embedded circuits.

Course Overview

Getting into the beginning of the course, you’ll want to push the volume up on your system higher than normal. The lecturer is fairly soft-spoken. This isn’t helped by occasional static in the audio recording and a clear mic drop at one point. I think it would have been beneficial if the lecturer had gone back to fix these issues, but for some reason, he opted not to. On a positive note, the slides were quite detailed and filled with plenty of information.

After giving an introduction into the types of programming code used on embedded devices, the lecturer dives into the hardware aspect of things. This is beneficial as it gives you an idea of what you should consider when choosing from multiple embedded controllers. Included in this are important considerations like the size of the available memory and the ease with which devices can be maintained.

Another key consideration raised is program portability, which is crucial as you may later want to move or adapt a piece of software from one type of device to work on another. After this, the lecturer next returns to a discussion on the different types of programming languages and he explains the pros and cons of each, which ultimately leads to why learning the embedded C programming language is beneficial.

At this point, roughly 15 minutes into the short two-hour course, the lecturer begins to really teach you to understand the code and provides examples along the way. Included in this is a discussion on data types in Embedded C and lectures dedicated to specific operations, such as asthmatic and a 30-minute section on Bitwise.

The last portion of the course walks you through how to write a simple program using embedded C to make LED lights blink. After writing the code, the lecturer shows you how to design the hardware configuration using a software utility, after which he teaches you how to actually load the software onto a microcontroller.

Conclusion

Overall I feel this class was highly informative, but it’s far from perfect. I struggled throughout the entire course to understand the lecturer. Due to issues with the audio, I found myself having to read the slides presented in the lecture carefully in order to understand the course. This is far from an ideal situation, as some parts of the course don’t have accompanying text to help you understand. The explanations the lecturer gives are also quite helpful, but I had to listen to parts multiple times in order to fully comprehend what was said. This can get a little tiresome after a while, and you will need to be patient and slowly go through this course if you really want to learn from it.

I would still recommend this course to anyone looking to learn the basics of Embedded C, as I feel I’ve learned more about the language from this course and that I would learn considerably more by going over the course again. Right now you can get it for $9.99, but it typically costs $19.99.

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