Yes Keith !

There ARE decent tools to relieve you from all the intricacies of the device
you are programming.
We call these things "higher level languages".
"C" is an example, "BASIC" another to mention two that are around in PIC
world.
They do the translation to assembly code for you.
They shout at you, if you are lucky, when they get out of memory, and only if
you programmed them to do so, and on systems that are able to shout.
PIC's do not shout. They do not report errors either. They just crash or run
away.
Even highest level languages do not tell you how to stay with your program
within the limits of your hardware. How should they know?
Sorry, in Embedded World you walk alone!
See it as a challenge, and be happy, or see it as a nuisance, and find an
other toy!



Keith Howell wrote:

> TONY NIXON 54964 wrote about crunching code into limited ROM.
>
> Congratulations.
>
> I wish there were decent design tools for assembly programming.
>
> I don't mean just an assembler, but something that would
> - point out where registers can do double duty
> - point out potential stack overflows
> - manage code and data paging
> - etc.
> so that I can concentrate on the application and not the
> intricacies of the chip.
>
> Compilers do a lot of automated code generation and checking.
> It would be nice to have the same sophistication for assembly.
>
> For me, limited resources are just one challenge.
> I want to know if the code I write is flawed or not.
> Recalling product with duff code is more expensive than
> paying for slightly bigger PICs!