[time-nuts] Good (cheap) PIC chip choice for project?

Bob Camp lists at rtty.us
Sun May 26 09:27:41 EDT 2013


Hi

I started out loading Unix via tape on a PDP-11 back in 1974. C has been around for a while. It's also got a bit of baggage from those roots. I do indeed code quite a bit in C, I just don't use it for everything. Different tools for different jobs.

Bob

On May 25, 2013, at 10:52 PM, Orin Eman <orin.eman at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Didier Juges <shalimr9 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> While I have often said that I have more time than money, I still consider
>> that my time is too scarce (or valuable) for assembly language.
>> 
>> My opinion is that the language for small embedded devices is C. Some may
>> disagree, but after over 40 years of writing software for a whole bunch of
>> platforms (obviously not all in C), I see no reason to switch to something
>> else for small embedded systems.
>> 
>> Therefore make sure you select a chip/family/architecture for which you
>> can get a decent C compiler.
>> 
>> Friends don't let friends write in assembly.
>> 
>> 
> 
> I agree entirely.
> 
> C is pretty close to assembly itself in a way... given its history where
> *p1++ = *p2++; was one PDP-11 instruction.
> 
> It's so much easier to get a program going in C than PIC assembly; now
> which way around do I have to put the operands to subtract a constant?  (I
> had macros to do such things before I switched to a C compiler.)
> 
> I have tried a few PIC C compilers and actually paid money for the
> SourceBoost compiler.  I look at the assembly output and it usually does at
> least as good a job as I would.  If not and it's timing critical, I can
> embed some assembly, though the little review I just did showed that the
> timing critical parts were in C!
> 
> Orin.
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.



More information about the time-nuts mailing list