In this chapter, we introduced the concept of an IDE and why you might choose to use one. A list of considerations was presented, along with categories of IDEs and suggestions for when it is best to use them. All of this material was put to use as we selected the IDE used in this book. Finally, we took a look at STMCubeMX and discussed how it can be used in different stages of a project.

Having a good understanding of the trade-offs to be made when designing a workflow (which includes choosing software tools) for your embedded system's code development will help you to make informed decisions, which can make a huge impact on productivity.

In the next chapter, we'll continue looking at tools for increasing productivity on FreeRTOS-based embedded firmware projects. The next set of tools allows you to actually see how your code is behaving in an extremely convenient way.