On Fri, 29 May 1998, Dennis Plunkett wrote:

> At 01:33 PM 29/05/98 +0800, you wrote:
> >Hi all
> >Does anyone have experience with the PbasicPRO compiler?
> >Is it worth getting, and does it support all the functions of the
> >PIC?
> >Thanks
> >
> >Justin Grimm    reaper@southwest.com.au
> >
> >
>
> Hello Justin ,from a fellow Aussie
> My question is why basic? The PIC assembler is quite easy, and on top of
> that one could argue that C is an industry standard.
>
> Dennis
>
PTM: I'm for the Basic. It was originally to be a SIMPLE way to write code
for a person who doesn't want to learn high level programming. In the PC
world I have allways wondered why they didn't take Basic for the command
prompt language and to be used in the .BAT -files. They had the code
allready in the PC's PROM, so it would not be hard to do. There got to be
something wrong with IBM and Micro$oft.

In hardware programming Basic makes it fast to make simple systems. I have
myself written the programs first with PICBasic and then compiled
time and space -critical parts anew with ASM after they work in Basic.
This makes testing fast.
Sometimes I have not found any method to write faster code than PICBasic.

I'n not against C, I have used it myself very much, but writing user
interfaces and character string manipulatin is still easier with a good
basic (I wonder why they don't have QuickBasic any more for the PC)

PICBasic has been very effective system: code is tight and rather fast. It
is easy to optimise to assembler. It is even easy to comment and document.
What I would like to have is a PIC emulator (simulator ?) in PC so that I
have not to compile and move the code to PIC.

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PTM, pasi.mustalahti@utu.fi, ptmusta@utu.fi, http://www.utu.fi/~ptmusta
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