In embedded and high-performance applications, it's hard to write code.

• Keep functions small and focused

• Use descriptive names

• DRY don't repeat yourself

• Use abstractions (try to abstract and mock your hardware to test on regular machines.) Abstractions should have multiple layers so you can think about them in simpler terms.

• Use a TTD like gtest, as rigorously as possible.

• Optimize late: get things working and then benchmark to tune

• Write for humans, not computers (favor readable code)

• if something confusing/difficult, write some utilities around it that make it harder to use incorrectly (define your API to guide your users)

• whenever a computer/tool can do something better than humans, use it and make it impossible to not use.

• Sanitizers (AddressSanitizer, UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer)

• Linters (clang-tidy)

• Code formatting (clang-format)

• Compile with -WError as many warnings

• Compile at least hardware-abstracted unit tests) with multiple modern compilers.

References