Timing Is Everything - Embedded Systems Demand Early Teaching of Structured Time-Oriented Programming

Computing was originally dominated by desktop and hence data oriented systems. However, embedded and hence time-oriented systems, which must measure input events or generate output events of specified time durations, or must execute at regular time intervals, are increasingly commonplace. Blinking a light on and off for 1 second represents a "Hello World" example of a time-oriented system. Time-oriented programming differs significantly from the more common data-oriented programming, and developing correct maintainable time-oriented programs is challenging.