[time-nuts] I want a good micro-controller

[Bruce Raymond]

Hi all,

I'm a lurker and decided to stick my neck out a little. I, too started 
out as a hardware engineer. In this case real hardware - I did 
structural analysis of nuclear components. That was a few lifetimes ago. 
I'm doing software now.

I'm in agreement with the comments about Basic being conducive to sloppy 
programming. I want my compiler to do as much checking as possible, and 
that's not in line with Basic. I'm partial to C for embedded applications.

The PIC architecture is truly atrocious. However, I've been using PICs 
for years and am familiar with the development environment. I'm not in a 
hurry to learn something else for casual use. The C compilers for PICs 
play games with creating a pseudo stack by reallocating memory. I'd hate 
to have to do that manually, but it seems to work alright when 
implemented by compiler.

My actual contribution to the thread is a link to a free C compiler for 
PICs that works pretty well. I have been using the CCS compiler and 
switched to this one.

www.sourceboost.com/

Bruce Raymond/ND8I



Didier Juges wrote:
> That is an interesting thread. So I feel like I have to add my $0.02
>
> I am a casual programmer. I got into programming when I had to, because it
> was, at one time, the path of least resistance for something I wanted to do.
> I am otherwise an EE. Today, I spend my time 50/50 doing hardware design and
> software design. Most my software is embedded software, with a few
> exceptions.
>
> I am in the interesting position of having written (and re-written)
> essentially the same desktop application under 4 different environments:
> QuickBasic 4.5 (I can hear teeth clinching...), Microsoft QuickC 2.5
> (MS-DOS), gcc under Linux and Visual Basic 6.0, so I think I can compare the
> environments and the results pretty well.
>
> While the visual appeal (eye candy) of the VB 6.0 version is undeniable, by
> far the easiest to maintain (and with fewest bugs) is the gcc version.
> Feature-wise, it matches the VB 6.0 version, but in different ways. It is
> not as pretty (ncurses on an 80x24 terminal is NOT eye-candy) but it does
> things that I have not even contemplated doing under VB.
>
> Basic (and Visual Basic) go out of their way to make things easy, and as a
> result allow way too many bugs (I call them undocumented features). They are
> great to quickly simulate a user interface, or for a quick tool, but you do
> not want to write large programs with it. Even though I know people who have
> done it successfully, I myself have not been successful with it. It is just
> too hard to do the right thing with Basic, it encourages slopiness.
>
> Other than the PC, I write a fair amount of code for the 8051 and it's
> variants, in C, using either the Keil compiler, or more recently the SDCC. I
> have done a good bit of assembly for the Motorola 68HC05 way back (and the
> 8008 even farther back), and I am very glad this is over. The Motorola
> architectures are usually pretty well done, but assembly? Pleeeeaaase...
> (actually not quite over yet, I have my version of the 10 MHz-PPS divider
> originally by TVB, mine runs on an 8051 and is written in assembly too)
>
> In general, I find C programs easy to write and easy to maintain, and C
> matches well with my hardware background.
>
> Didier KO4BB
>
>
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