Comment by toast0

> Depending on size of the embedded system, the preconditions differs slighly; An Android phone is an embedded system, just like an 8051.

I wanted to say something like this. The needs of your embedded system drive what constitutes good. Some embedded systems are still tiny, small microcontrollers are so inexpensive they've taken over lots of things; OTOH, other embedded systems are really just PCs with specialized software and maybe stricter timing. A microwave probably has a tiny microcontroller with minimal ram and rom; building software for that is likely going to be assembly, C, or something else that can run in constrained environments. An arcade machine or even software for a home console is an embedded system, but they're not really constrained environments anymore, and you can run almost any environment you like; you can certainly throw away some code size to improve debugability and developer experience, and probably some performance too as long as you're within reasonable bounds.