Race conditions can occur when a multithreaded application accesses a shared resource using over one thread. Unless we have guards in place, the result might depend on which thread “got there first”. This is especially problematic when the state is changed externally. A race can cause more than just incorrect behavior. It can enable a security vulnerability when the resource in question can be corrupted in the right way. A good example of race condition vulnerabilities is mangling memory.

This article takes a look at a few different aspects of C structure initialization. In particular, we’ll look at when it matters, the current state of things in Clang and GCC, recommendations, and the ✨ future ✨. Time to dive into this very niche, but occasionally hazardous corner of the C language!

Here are the articles, videos, and tools that we’ve been excited about this January. We hope you enjoy these links, and we look forward to hearing what you’ve been reading in the comments or on the Interrupt Slack.

Debugging is a fundamental skill in the arsenal of any engineer. Mistakes happen, and bugs are inevitable, but a skilled debugger can catch a bug early and find an elegant solution.

As much as I enjoy writing firmware, I am, at heart, a hardware engineer. I love hunting for minutia in chip datasheets. I love fiddling with eval boards, tacking on wires, and reworking nets together. I love flipping through The Art of Electronics, finding a new circuit, and piecing through its operation. This is why, when invited to write for Interrupt, I jumped at the chance to write about a hardware-related topic that’s near and dear to my heart: debug tools.

If you develop software for an embedded system, you need some kind of system feedback. Debuggers are awesome tools, but when it comes to analyzing dynamic behavior in the field, they cannot be used. For remote debugging, many engineers turn to printf, which can usually be quickly put in place after having a putchar() implemented. This turns out to be an expensive way, in terms of processor clocks and required FLASH memory for the strings.

Earlier this year we launched Datadog Apps, which seamlessly integrate functionality from third-party tools into Datadog’s centralized monitoring platform. This project has enabled us to collaborate with some of our partners, such as PagerDuty and LaunchDarkly, to extend the Datadog UI and provide our customers with new solutions for incident management, feature flag optimization, and more.

🎉 Happy 2022 everyone! 🎉 Here are the articles, videos, and tools that we’ve been excited about this December. We hope you enjoy these links, and we look forward to hearing what you’ve been reading in the comments or on the Interrupt Slack.