On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 08:16:03PM +0200, jumanji wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 03:22:42AM +0100, Benjamin Bromilow wrote:
> > > Without wanting to sound naive, have we thought of looking at or asking
> what
> > > beginners want in a PIC kit? As much as the "Developer" is pushed
> forwards,
> > > if it's not what newbies want, we're eliminating a problem that never
> > > existed.
> >
> > Well there's two issues here:
> >
> > 1) Beginner's lack the experience to know what they want or need. Most of
> the
> > time their criteria is limited to "I want to program a PIC." and "I don't
> want
> > to spend a lot of money." We've been on that end of the development cycle.
> > So I think it's perfectly valid to have more experienced developers define
> > the design criteria.
>
>
> erm.... so it's impossible for us newbies to have a goal or even a good
> suggestion, & are we just to be ignored ?
> thanks.

No it's not that at all. It's just that a lack of experience makes it
difficult to know what are the relevant bits to pick out of the vast stream
of information that's out there. So what tends to happen is that they'll pick
what's popular and have an extremely narrow focus.

Those two issues are what started this thread and the project to begin with.
Novices picking the 16F84. Novices designing their own programmers from the
applications notes. Novices not being able to get going because of one
miswired, or mislabled connection. Novices having an inability to discern
which of the 12 different issues that is causing the system not to work.

It just difficult to see the big picture until you've actually seen the big
picture. Once you've walked the path and know where the potholes are, it's
quite a bit easier to explain to someone else what to watch out for.

And BTW I'm specifically referring to a novice to the entire world of
embedded microcontroller development. If anyone came along and said that
they'd been doing 8051 or 68332 type embedded development for a number of
years, they wouldn't be a novice to this discussion because they've
been there. I'd expect to get a lot if very valid issues from such
developers (i.e. pics are too slow, to small, won't run from external memory,
banking sucks, the overbearing use of the W register, too many limitations
in terms of high level languages, and the like...)

Finally this is an open discussion. No permission is required to either
participate in it or to repetitively pound a set of points as I admit that
I've been doing. We have quite a few novice users here on the list. Let's
hear their thoughts.

BAJ

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