On Jun 26, 2007, at 4:15 PM, Mark Rages wrote:

> For someone just beginning, I'd recommend considering a
> microcontroller with GCC support.  This may not be a PIC.
>
gcc doesn't exactly come with a beginner-class IDE, does it?
(Possibly excepting "Arduino")  For someone just beginning,
maybe a set of CLI-based tools aren't the best idea?  (OTOH,
if they're going to do embedded programming, "leaving the GUI
nest"  might be a good thing.)

A fair number of the commercial C compilers have "evaluation
versions" that produce reasonable amounts of code for a
reasonable number of processors for "hobbyist" use.  I've
been using CC5X a bit, for instance.  Hi-TECH recently
expanded the PICC-lite capabilities quite a bit as well.

And there's JAL, which is enough C-like to be usable for
a C programmer, I think.  Though you lose any portability
that you might have been aiming for by using a HLL.

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