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Review: Modern Software Engineering

Review: Modern Software Engineering

Steve Branam
Still RelevantIntermediate

This is actually a review of 3 books by Dave Farley, because they really form a set: Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster (just released for 2022, 224 pages) Continuous Delivery: Reliable...


Summary

This blog review by Steve Branam synthesizes three of Dave Farley's books, extracting practical software-engineering practices tailored to embedded and IoT development. Readers will learn how ideas like continuous delivery, robust automated testing, and rapid feedback loops can be adapted to firmware, embedded Linux, and constrained hardware environments.

Key Takeaways

  • Apply continuous delivery principles to firmware: break work into small increments, use artifact immutability, and plan safe rollout strategies for devices.
  • Invest in automated testing at all levels: implement unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) tests to catch regressions earlier.
  • Adopt reproducible builds and CI pipelines: automate builds, signing, and deployment to reduce integration friction and ensure traceability.
  • Introduce observability and fast feedback: add telemetry, structured logging, and short feedback cycles to speed debugging and increase reliability.

Who Should Read This

Intermediate embedded/firmware engineers, tech leads, and IoT product engineers who want to apply modern software engineering practices (CI/CD, testing, observability) to constrained devices and embedded Linux stacks.

Still RelevantIntermediate

Topics

Firmware DesignDevOps/CITesting/DebugEmbedded Linux

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