I have called this "The Never Ending Religious War over C Languages" in
the past <GRIN> , another way to look at it is, if you don't like my
answer, look in the PIC archives and you'll find someone with the opposite
opinion.

1.  Hitech PICC lite is free, and you already know the
advantages/disadvantages of it.  Their full-scale version costs $600-800 I
think (look it up)

2. CCS PCM will do any chip with a 14 bit core, costs $99, and is not a
bad program.  I find it a little easier to learn than Hitech C, and a
little more forgiving to the new user, since it is not strictly ANSI
compliant.  Brothers have come to blows with drawn swords over the
differences and advantages of CCS C vs Hitech C, but the bottom line is
CCS is cheaper up front.  CCS charges a maintenance fee of $99 per year if
you want to keep up with the current chips.  Hobbyists might not need to
bother with this.

3.  If you want a GNU compiler, try Jal from Wouter Van Ooijen (Wouter is
a guy on the PICLIST not a company)  Jal is a high-level language for a number of Microchip PIC (16c84, 16f84,
12c508, 12c509, 16F877) and Ubicom SX (SX18 and SX28) microcontrollers
resembling Pascal. http://www.voti.nl/jal/n_index.html    Between these five PICs you could
accomplish about anything you'd ever want to do with a PIC as a hobby
project.  the '877 will do about anything a PIC will do, and the 12C508 is
as small and cheap as they come.  And you can't beat the price.

Why use C or JAL?  Speed of coding and maintainability of your code, plus
a better understanding of what it is doing.

Why stick with assembler?  Learning curve of C can be steep, other tools
cost money.

There are basic compilers for the PIC too.  If you don't already know
BASIC, then they will be as much work to learn as C and as expensive.
There are also Basic Stamps, which have a Basic interpreter built in and
are pretty easy to program.  I don't know much  else about them except
they are a common entry point for hobbyists.

-- Lawrence Lile





Ryan Underbrink <runderbrink@EV1.NET>
Sent by: pic microcontroller discussion list <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
02/17/2003 12:49 PM
Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list


        To:     PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
        cc:
        Subject:        Languages -ASM, C++, BASIC


Quick Question:

I did a bunch of work with PICs in college, and now I'm hobbying around
with them, mainly in robots and such. Back then I did all of my
programming in ASM, but I want to know what I should use when I'm wanting
to speed up the process and just get something working quickly. I have a
copy of PICC Lite, but I see that only works for three chips.  Is there a
decently priced (<$100) package that can program all the PIC Micros?  I
know most of the ones I've seen are $$$$. And what about BASIC? I've never
really messed with BASIC Programming, so I'm not sure what capabilities
(PWM and the like) are covered in these BASIC Compiler packages.

Thanks,
Ryan
runderbrink@ev1.net

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