On Fri, 9 Aug 2002 17:12:25 -0500, you wrote:

>On Fri, 9 Aug 2002 16:38:58 -0400, Michael A. Powers wrote:
>>Don't get me wrong, I like Microchip, and I like the way that they
>>provide their development software for free. =A0But there are just a =
few
>>things about MPLAB that really get to me. =A0I can ignore the small
>>bugs, lackluster interface, and the fact Microsoft is developing 64
>>bit windows and MPLAB is still 16 bit. Such things are immaterial.
>>(Hopefully v. 6.0 will be a big improvement.) =A0What I can't ignore is
>>the poor performance of the simulator. =A0It seems to be intentionally
>>lethargic! =A0Why must programs like SPEED.EXE be used as an =
accelerant?
>>Is MPLAB sandbagged? =A0It consumes about 1% of the CPU's resources and
>>idles the rest. =A0I though that Microchip might not expend much effort
>>on MPLAB in the hopes that 3rd party developers would pick up the
>>slack, but where are they?
>>
>>What do you think about this?
>
>I haven't liked MPLAB for at least 5 years (since before they said
>MPLAB 6 would be out "anytime" and "soon"). Yes, they were saying that
>at the Masters Conference in 1997! So far I'm not too impressed with
>MPLAB 6 either, but it's obviously still young.
>
>My major gripes with MPLAB has always the 16-bit code, the clunky
>simulator (although I do use it once in a while), the AWFUL support for
>3rd party compilers -- especially source level debugging in C. Some may
>say it's not realistic to ask Microchip to support 3rd party tools,
>BUT...
>
>this leads us to Michael's question "I though that Microchip might not
>expend much effort on MPLAB in the hopes that 3rd party developers
>would pick up the slack, but where are they?"
>
>The answer is simple: Would you expend significant time and energy to
>design, develop and market a 3rd party equivalent to MPLAB when MPLAB
>is FREE? I've thought several times about writing one myself, but each
>time I look at what I might be able to charge for it and the limited
>market size -- well, it's very discouraging to say the least. Plus,
>Microchip is not very willing to divulge technical details of things
>like the Picstart+ interface and such. I doubt anyone could sell
>anything less than a full-featured IDE for a sum that would pay back
>the engineering investment in a reasonable time frame.
>
>I'm disappointed in Microchip's development tool group. They are good
>guys and I've met several of them. My own personal opinion is they
>really don't have sufficient funding/staffing/support with regards to
>the tools they'd like to produce and support. Of course, that's my
>opinion... I could be wrong. ;-)
I think they're just too busy keeping up with all the zillions of
product variations.... do they REALLY need that many different PICs ?

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