Listen! Do you hear a subtle hum, a buzz of computation? The 26 billion processors sold every year entertain us, optimize fuel economy, run factories and literally underlie the fabric of civilization.

I'm Jack Ganssle (bio) and I'm on a mission to help developers produce better products faster. My weekly column on embedded.com, seminars and the 1200+ articles on this site all show better ways to build embedded products, while maximizing the fun of engineering hardware and firmware.

Free Newsletter - The Embedded Muse

Free twice-a-month embedded systems newsletter, now in its 17th year. No hype, just down to earth hints, tricks and ideas about better ways to build embedded systems - both hardware and firmware. The latest issue (#288,August 3, 2015) contains ideas for doing in-the-field firmware upgrades and on second sources for components. Check out the back issues.

Firmware Seminars

Want to reduce bugs? Meet deadlines? Bring Jack into your facility for his one day Better Firmware Faster seminar. Over 5000 of your colleagues on six continents are now better developers as a result of this course. You'll learn how to estimate a schedule accurately, reduce bugs by an order of magnitude, manage reuse, build predictable real-time code, better ways to deal with uniquely embedded problems like reentrancy, heaps, stacks and hardware drivers, and much more. It's fast-paced, packed with information you can use today, and a lot of fun.

Better Firmware Faster in Australia and New Zealand: I've done public versions of this class in Europe, Asia and India a number of times. Now, for the first time, I'm bringing it to Sydney on November 9 and Auckland on November 16. There's more information here. Seating is limited so sign up early.

Expert Witness

From time to time I've been privileged to work as an expert witness. This is a fascinating area of work, as one gets to dive deeply into the technology of some very cool products. Find more information here.

Articles, Books and Tool Reviews

I have written over 900 articles about the unique and fascinating subject of embedded systems since 1988, and have a weekly column which I call Random Rants. I've also reviewed many books about embedded systems, and have written six as well.

Vendors make all sorts of claims about their tools, but real-world experience is much more important. Developers have contributed their opinions about a huge number of tools. Submit your own thoughts on tools you love or hate.

From salary surveys to articles about debouncing, ultra-low power design, consulting, floating point approximations, testing RAM, watchdog timers and much, much more - check out these special reports about embedded issues.

Last updated August 4, 2015