On Nov 8, 2005, at 2:07 PM, Nathan Nottingham wrote:

> if you were to start over, would you still choose PICs as your
>  development platform of choice?

Hmm.  I have AVRs, and find the somewhat superior in architecture to 
PICs.
However, "architectural superiority" is not what made PICs a success in 
the
first place; it has more to do with the ready availability of chips, 
tools,
advice, and projects (or "reference designs", if you want to be 
professional.)
I find the fact that Atmel hasn't made a profit in quite a while 
somewhat
disturbing and worrisome (especially as a stockholder.  Sigh.)
On the other hand, there are MANY microcontrollers these days that have
a level of availability and support similar to what microchip provided 
in
their early days, and I'm not sure whether "success" is due to relative
levels of support or absolute levels...  In effect, there seem to be a 
lot
more viable choices than there used to be.

Given my newfound sensitivity to chips that might go away, I've been 
watching
the 8051 "crowd" with some envy.  There's an architecture that's 
expanded nicely,
scaled up and down, and doesn't tie you to a single vendor nearly as 
much as...
nearly anything else in the 8bit world...

BillW
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