Mark Newland wrote...


> I can't speak for others but one of the main things I am looking at is NOT
> learning 4+ versions of 'C'.  I want to eventually learn 'C' so I can do
some
> programming for the palm pilot (take advantage of the IrDA port).  I may
also
> want to learn some 'C' (maybe visual 'C') for the desktop environment
(maybe do
> IrDA programming there too or some test routines).  Maybe even be able to
do some
> 'C' one day in the future for Linux.  I know that these 3 versions of 'C'
are not
> going to be compatible with each other but they are at least simular (I
least I
> think they are).  What I don't want is to learn a 'C' language for the PIC
that
> is dis-simular to the other 3.

> Again, someone please PLEASE tell me that I am completely confused and
have no
> idea what I am talking about.

My experience is that C is only portable until you write the first line of
code that is specific to the target hardware/operating system. It doesn't
matter whether it is a PIC, 8051, C167, Windows, Linux, Palm, etc. You could
choose to use only the strict ANSI features of any vendors compiler and
write your own platform specific code, but why? The end result, other than
the non-standard API you invent, would still only be useable on one
platform. All the extra coding, testing, documentation, and debugging would
probably take far longer than learning the pragmatic features of a specific
vendors compiler.

I'm not meaning to bash C or your questions. If you learn C well adjusting
to the various vendor specific features, etc. will be fairly painless.

Tim

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