A few days ago I posted my first piclist posting, asking for some advice 
about tutorials about pic programming.  I received a lot of very helpful 
replies from experienced people, and after spending a few days looking 
at the different tutorials thought it might be helpful to other newbies 
to give my thoughts.

First, I think that all the tutorials approach the subject from  the 
viewpoint of a hardware person who wants to learn something about 
programming, rather than from the viewpoint of a software person who 
knows how to program (although not a pic) but needs a lot of guidance on 
the hardware aspects of things.  The reason that I say this is that a 
lot of knowledge about such subjects as, for example, A/D conversion 
seems to be taken for granted.  Us programmer types are not necessarily 
all that familiar with such things.  :-)  We should be, I agree, but I 
think that more emphasis on exactly what is happening with the hardware 
in even the most trivial circuit would be useful.

Second, none of the available tutorials really seem to be completely 
up-to-date.  I do not know much about how fast Microchip comes out with 
new products, and of course am too much of an inexperienced newbie to 
really say anything particularly intelligent about this subject, but I 
have this feeling that by the time a tutorial  gets written, edited, and 
put out for general consumption,  that  the technology has moved on.  
Probably no way to fix that, but it sure would be nice to see a tutorial 
that started out with the new stuff available.  (Are there any tutorials 
for the new ds30 pics that I read about?)

Third, every tutorial seems to excel in certain areas and be weak in 
others.  This probably reflects  the background of the author, and since 
they all have done a better job than I could ever do I am definitely not 
being critical -- but I would very much second the advice of one of the 
people who advised me --  that a newbie should use several tutorials 
rather than just one.

Fourth, after reading a good deal, it seems clear that building a 
programmer, rather than buying one, is a good idea for a newbie like 
me.  Not for someone who is doing this stuff for a living, of course -- 
but just to further my education as to how all this stuff works.  It 
just seems like, to me anyway, that building a programmer and getting it 
to work would be important.   I might be wrong on that one, though.

Fifth, and last, one thing that is fast becoming obvious is that my 
electronic background is a lot weaker than I thought, after looking at 
the material.  I thought my background was pretty good (two years of 
pre-engineering), but it definitely needs improving.  Probably most of 
us who have played around with electronics have a copy of "The Art of 
Electronics," by Hayes and Horowitz, on the bookshelf.  But perhaps a 
lot of newbies like me do not know that there is a companion book called 
"Student Manual for the Art of Electronics" by the same authors, which 
offers a whole lot more down-to-earth details..  I found one of these on 
Amazon.Com for $17 and plan to use it extensively in furthering my 
knowledge of what I am doing.

And just in case you might wonder just what I am doing, let me just say 
that my college education got interupted when the family grew 
unexpectedly, and that now I am an associate manager at a place that 
does a lot of business around lunchtime.  But I have a little corner of  
the bedroom in the apartment that I can use for a workshop, and by 
agreement with my wife the time between 8 PM (after the baby goes to 
sleep) and midnight (when I go to sleep) is mine to further my 
self-education.

So thanks for listening, and I hope that perhaps some of the comments 
are useful to other newbies (I feel sure the old-timers will yawn and 
delete  the message.  :-)

Take care,
Bill


-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist