This book aims to inspire newcomers to the world of embedded programming - as well as seasoned developers looking to fill in the blanks. In his new book, the author of "Embedded Software for the IoT” and ”SQL Server with C#”, throws the spotlight on the heart of all intelligent devices - the Microcontroller. Klaus Elk enthusiastically describes the building blocks of Microcontrollers, and debugs sample C-programs to show how compiler and linker builds the binary program for the Cortex-M Microcontroller. Along the way we get a feel for CMSIS – the libraries supplied by Arm and partners. We study the Floating-Point Unit and its alternatives, before moving on to parallel programming, and the basics of Real-Time Operating Systems. Klaus ties it all together in small demos using e.g., FreeRTOS. The aim of this book is to give you - the reader - a better understanding of what goes on in an embedded system. Using a mix of theory and examples, we will work our way through complex subjects from different perspectives. Following software from C-source through the compiler and linker - into the memory - we will get a taste of assembly code. Studying how different types of memories are used in embedded systems, we will see how they are accessed and controlled by the CPU-core. Looking at the modern microcontroller, we will see it perform floating-point operations. Armed with the above knowledge we will see how operating systems work, and we will discuss important patterns for parallel processing.