Let me tell you about one project I have been working on. It was a large embedded device, with lots of highly optimized code in C and ASM on Sharks and Blackfins. The problem was, every time you changed the code, you also had to push it on the device via FTP, then power down the device to reset it's memory, then reboot it with the new binary and reconnect your FTP and debugging host. Some of that could be automated, some not.
However, we also had a scripting interface. Update a script, tell the software to restart, done. Easy.
Nice.. I too was working with embedded C++ dev w/ a Blackfin & Sharc combo and yes the standard build cycle was kind of lame. I attended a Blackfin course that just happened to be located at Analog Devices HQ. In the 4 days that I was there I got an OSC (Open Sound Control) library w/ message parsing and Lua support up and running hooked up to desktop GUI audio control apps built with a framework I've created in Java. I continued to try and get things going with the OSC message parsing to Sharc communication for DSP control (Ambisonics mostly), but then Android steam rolled me..
I already had a real time app dev runtime / framework in Java for J2SE that immediately started porting to also run on Android. A modern SoC and Android w/ my framework on the desktop and on the device for 3rd party app dev is now driving my future audio hardware dev efforts. First though I get to do a general release of the software dev framework as a product which never really would have happened without Android showing up. Things changed a lot recently!
Anyway, good idea with the scripting / Blackfin deal though as that can pay off big.
However, we also had a scripting interface. Update a script, tell the software to restart, done. Easy.