Programming is an essential engineering skill. To almost any engineer, it is
as important as circuit design to an electrical engineer, as statistics to a civil
engineer, and as heat transfer to a chemical engineer. The engineer has to
program in high-level languages to solve problems. He or she also should
be able to read assembly-language programs to understand what a high-level
language does. Finally, he or she should understand the capabilities of a
microcontroller because they are components in many systems designed,
marketed, and maintained by engineers. The first goal of this book then is to
teach engineers how a computer executes instructions. The second goal is to
teach the engineer how a high-level language statement converts to assembler
language. A final goal is to teach the engineer what can be done on a
small computer and how the microcomputer is interfaced to the outside
world. Even the nonprogramming engineer should understand these issues.
Although this book is written for engineers, it will serve equally well for
anyone, even hobbyists, interested in these goals.