I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of automated testing of production software. The problem I faced in implementing anything like “automated testing” was that I couldn’t figure out how to do it with embedded firmware.
Writing firmware can be tricky. There are often dependencies that you can’t control. Typical problems include: How do you test complicated protocol stacks? How can you test the control of analog hardware whose behavior changes with temperature and/or humidity? How can you automate observations of whether the LED is blinking?
In my many years of working as a “seasoned” embedded software engineer, I have been responsible for the creation of multiple large gobs of code that have seemed difficult or even impossible to test.