> IMO this is painful ... newbies want to see some results quick and
> without a full understanding of what can be achieved, the details
> aren't easily understood.  I say, get working examples, run those so
> you can verify the dev environment and programming tools, then start
> reading the datasheet and seeing what things can be done.  Mess with
> existing code and write some custom stuff then.

This depends on your learning style.  Your method would drive me nuts
because it's so inefficient and would leave me wondering what is really
going on far too often.  I prefer to learn these kinds of things by
sitting down and reading the manuals carefully and thoroughly.

This may take a couple of days if you're new to PICs, but then you'll
undestand what's going on and have a clear idea of the bigger picture.
You can now design the whole project without painting yourself into a
corner because you had a major misconception about how some subsystem
worked.  Sure, you'll be looking up details all the time for the next week
or two, the important point is that you'll know they are there and roughly
where to look.  In the end you will have spent far less time on the
learning curve because of the basic understanding present during all the
hands on time.  You'll also be asking few stupid questions to which the
correct answer is RTFM.  Instead, you'll be using the available experts in
a more productive way by asking them about gotchas at the edges of the
architecture and documentation.  This means they will respect you more and
probably enjoy answering your questions instead of thinking "Quick, hide,
here comes that idiot again."  Asking an expert is like crying "wolf".
You don't want to do it too often, and you want to make sure there's
really a wolf there every time.

If you do this right, you can go from new to PICs to first small project
working with decent understanding of the PIC and tools in a week or so.
Of course there will be lots of learning and familiarization after that,
but you'll be reasonably productive.  Figure two weeks of overall learning
time in the first month.  It will probably take a little longer before the
first time you write code without the instruction set summary and picture
of the memory map open next to the keyboard, but these thing become
automatic all by themselves after a while.


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(978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com

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