Andrew Warren - fastfwd@ix.netcom.com said:
    Maybe I should just keep re-posting my "MPC is the only C compiler
    suitable for professional software development" message until it
    finally sinks in...

Maybe, but that doesn't mean it needs to be.

A C-compiler aimed at generate byte-codes similar to what parallax uses in
the basic stamp might be a lot easier.  A pascal compiler easier still
(Since it's been done - remember p-codes?)

Personally, I'll side with the guy who thought trying to program a PIC in C
was silly.  Sorta like trying to reprogram your video game machine in
smalltalk.  The sort of C program that fits in a couple K of memory on a
machine with no stacks or pointers could equally well be written in any high
level language.  There might be portability reasons for writing C code
without pointers or stackframes or printf or any of that stuff, but the
resulting code would end up so PIC specific anyway, there wouldn't be much
point.

Structured assembler anyone?

[So, I haven't introduced myself yet.  I work for cisco Systems, the
networking company, writing code in C.  Before that I was a dec-20 assembly
programmer.  I like assembly.  I thought I wanted to be a EE, but I got into
microcontrollers in about 1976 (in highschool), when I realized that nearly
every electronic project I had ever built could have been equally easilly
programmed in the RCA1802 system recently published in popular electronics.
In college I chased microprocessors, noting what was neat about each one.  I
wrote a simulator for the 8085, and for a senior project code for an SDK-86.
Sadly, few of the newer processors are "neat" in the same way that they were
in the heyday of the 70s and 80s - now everything is designed with the fact
that a compiler is going to hide all the gross stuff from the user.  Except
microcontrollers.  Some of those are still neat, perhaps driven by the need
to write programs in finite memory space.  While older microcontroller
systems might have replaced electronic projects, the new low pin count
controllers might well replace any number of individual chips.  That's neat
too.  I've got a PICstart on my shelf, awating attention.  And an 82750 kit
too.  I want to play with them, and perhaps put them in model rockets.

When I get time...]

BillW