• C and the 8051 (4th edition) | | | |
• Programming Embedded Systems: With C and GNU Development Tools, 2nd Edition | | | |
• USB Complete: The Developer's Guide (Complete Guides series) | | | |
• The 8051/8052 Microcontroller: Architecture, Assembly Language, and Hardware Interfacing | | | |
• Designing Embedded Hardware | | | |

Great intro to embedded programming
Review written by: J. Beck From
This book was fantastic. Well written and organized. I think I have all the tools I need to start designing my software intelligently. I will be picking up his other book.

He includes a lot of code that I found somewhat useless (it's on the CD, after all). I would have preferred to see ONLY small snippets taken out and discussed. A minor gripe.

If you are going to be developing embedded code for the 8051 family of processors (or if you are new to embedded software), you need this book.

Very easy to understand
Review written by: James M. Mckelvy From
This book covers the basics of embedded programming on an 8051 microcontroller. It is very easy to read and understand and comes with an evaluation version of the keil compiler. Simulation software is built into the compiler so you can test your code on a simulated 8051 device. This is a good book for a beginner to embedded programming.

Maybe The Best Technical Book I've Read
Review written by: Kenneth Auger From San Diego CA
This may be the best technical book that I've ever read, and I've read a bunch. I can't say enough about Dr. Pont's accomplishment with this book.
He clearly and concisely takes the reader/student through the basics of programming embedded devices. He uses the 8051 with the Keil compiler as an example platform and provides adequate code listing examples. If you're an embedded guru with decades of experience in microcontroller programming this book may not be for you. However, if you're one of us, from a computer science background, whose embedded experience comes from programming at the application level, then I highly recommend "Embedded C" without reservation.

Helpful
Review written by: Matt Long From Colorado Springs, CO United States
As a desktop applications programmer this was a good introduction to the embedded world for me. Whenever I try to learn some new technology, there always tends to be a knowledge gap that needs bridged. Once it has been, I am able to start using whatever that technology is. I feel this book is my bridge for learning to write code for embedded systems.

When I first bought the book, I would just try to read it from chapter to chaper starting with chapter one. I've started to read it several times. This method, I now realize, was a mistake as there is some terminology that doesn't make sense even to a seasoned programmer such as myself. Embedded systems are quite different from building applications for an operating system running on a robust microprocessor.

I found that what I should have done from the start was to install the demo compiler from Keil and the project examples. Once I did this, the book really started to come to life as I could step through the code with the debugger and see what was really going on. I got through the first four chapters with a strong understanding in the very first evening I did this.

The book seems to do a good job of covering all of the main topics you would want to know about. It is not short on examples which is a great feature. I, do, however, have a single complaint. In chapter 5, Pont talks about code organization. Now, while I feel that this is a reasonable things to learn, for someone who is just getting started with embedded programming it would have been better to save that as a bonus chapter at the end and instead let all of the preceeding chapters contain everything in a single file. I'm not suggesting that it's a bad idea to organize your code. I'm simply stating that I was able to understand the first four chapters much quicker because I didn't have to jump around from file to file to figure out where a certain function or variable had been declared. Some might complain that keeping all of the code in a single file would create "spaghetti" code, however, for learning purposes, I feel this is a reasonable trade-off. Not to mention, the code examples are not terribly long.

In the end this book has been really great. The prose Pont uses is very approachable and he does a good job (especially at the beginning) to explain what is happening in the code. I definitely recommend this book and the 8051 is a great choice of processor. There is a lot of sample code on the web and it is a very well documented MCU. Plus the tools for development using this chip are very inexpensive as are the chips themselves.

Good Introduction to Keil's C51 Compiler
Review written by: Soon Yau Cheong From Malaysia
This is a good introduction to Keil's C51 compiler. I have 1 year experience writing PIC code using CCS C compiler. My latest project is to develope 8051 microcontroller firmware using Keil's C Compiler. The documentation provided by Keil is limited and confusing, not a good one to beginner.

"Embedded C" is definitely a rather good introductory book to Keil's C51 compiler. It is suitable to reader who already has knowledge of C programming. In this book, some special features and instructions are explained, such as sbit and the I/0 pin (which bother me the most in the beginning stage, as 8051 I/O is different from PIC and Motorola).

Furthermore, the author also introduce the Real Time Concept, RS232 etc which differ the Embedded C with the desktop C. This is especially useful to beginner of embedded programming.