On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 12:19:41PM -0500, Bill Kuncicky wrote:
> Nelson Johnsrud wrote:
> 
> >Just popping on this to let you know that I am another newbie to PICS, 
> >and I am intently watching this thread.  Like Bill, I may need some 
> >future hand-holding, but for now I have been reading, reading, 
> >reading.  I do have an Olimex PG4 (~$25) development board/programmer, 
> >which came with the 16F628A PIC, so Nigel's 16F628-based tutorial is 
> >proving very interesting reading for me.
> 
> Hi Nels -- thanks for the post.  I was beginning to wonder if my 
> approach of  "read before write" was the right one, but first Olin's 
> post and now yours, has reassured me. :-)   I think that Olin hit the 
> nail right on the head -- wanting instant gratification (an LED to 
> flash, or something like that) is deadly.

I think that thinking that you know everything you need to know about
PIC development after doing a blinky LED is deadly. The blinkly LED
verifies that your toolchain works. It does have value.

The pitfalls comes later down the road. Issues such as:

Assembly vs. HLL
Using hardware for tasks vs. software implementations.
Absolute code vs. relocatable code.
Choice of development environment

each represent a potential pothole that one can step into as one proceeds.

OTOH you don't need to know absolutely everything beore you get started
either. Often tutorials will take you in a lot of different directions for
the sake of full coverage. It can be overwhelming taking in all that material
before getting started at all.

I find that a sprial development model works for me. I learn a bit, design a
bit, develop a bit, test the results, then rinse and repeat. I tend to be
successful when working through new stuff a bit at a time. But of course that's
just one strategy.

BAJ
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