The Benefits of Considered Program Design and Structure There are numerous challenges when tackling an embedded system design project. It is usually wise first to consider the software design structure, particularly with large and multi-functional projects. It is not possible to program all functionality into a single control loop, so the approach for breaking up code into understandable features should be well thought out. In particular, it helps to ensure that the following can be achieved: • that code is readable, structured and documented • that code can be tested for performance in a modular form • that development reuses existing code utilities to keep development time short • that code design supports multiple engineers working on a single project • that future upgrades to code can be implemented efficiently. There are various C/Cþþ programming techniques that enable these design requirements to be considered, as discussed in this chapter.