Is embedded programming eventually just knowing the libraries built for your processor?

3    31 Jan 2016 19:04 by u/Pushtoopen

Mechanical engineer here: I understand that you have to understand how i/o works for embedded processors, but for the most part when i pull up examples for the board I'm using (stmf32_discovery) they are 90% function calls to custom functions for that board. Now obviously this wouldn't be the same for a custom board with a different processor, but do most processors come with basic c or c++ or assembly libraries to easily do GPIO? I just can't find many sources on basic understanding of accessing of pins on a processor, yet the examples for the newbie boards use tons of layered custom functions which don't help me learn how to program for multiple embedded processors.

3 comments

1 u/bisaya 01 Feb 2016 06:24

Find the spec sheet for the processor you're working on. It should give you their preferred assembly language. That's probably as low level as you can get without going into machine language. You want raw I/O, memory and processor access? I hope you have continuous paper and like tracing through multiple JMP calls. :)

0 u/Pushtoopen [OP] 01 Feb 2016 12:41

OK, so yeah. Every decently used processor has a typical language & libraries done for you then?

0 u/bisaya 01 Feb 2016 13:08

Generally yes. Usually, it's in the manufacturer's best interest to make their processor programmer friendly.