> No 'general truth' is true in all corner cases, but the consensus in
> literature (and this agrees with my experience) is that programming
> takes the same amount of time per line of code *regardless of the
> language used*. In most cases a HLL will produce more per line, so it
> will be more productive.

While this is true, I am not sure if there is anything about Assembly or
HLL. The fact is that you get more pre-made libs for C or Basic (even for
JAL), So that if you have a decent library for virtually everything, like
LCD module, FAT driver, I2C SPI etc even a configurable PID controller then
it is more productive, as you just have to use those libs/modules. So it
"generates more code in a single line". But it could be done for Assembly
too. Probably Olin has the most complex asm lib and I can imagine that he
can produce a code just as fast as any HLL developer.

In the other hand I agree with that part that with an HLL is is probably
easier to thinking a problem in a bit "higher level". But still most of the
C code I've seen tickling the bits (TRISA = 0x34 and stuff) well, that is
not a high level. High level would be something like:

def PORTB.0 as digital out;
def LED1 as PORTB.0;

LED1.on;
wait(100);
LED1.off;

(Before you ask, I do not know what language is that, it was only in my
imagination)

"digital" could be a class... out is just a parameter for the constructor,
maybe would be better to be written as

def PORTB.0 as digital(out);

... so that's why LED1.on (as a method) can be used later on as LED1 was
instantiated from the PORTB object - something like that :-)

Is there any language something like this for PIC, which still can produce a
fairly compact code?

Tamas


On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 4:19 PM, wouter van ooijen <wouter@voti.nl> wrote:

> > > It's hard to
> > > justify taking 10 to 20 times longer to produce a program
> >
> > I wasn't going to get into this food fight, and was going to
> > silently ignore that the HLL folks are making the implicit
> > and sometimes incorrect assumption that assembler takes
> > longer to write.
>
> No 'general truth' is true in all corner cases, but the consensus in
> literature (and this agrees with my experience) is that programming
> takes the same amount of time per line of code *regardless of the
> language used*. In most cases a HLL will produce more per line, so it
> will be more productive. But the figures I remember from literature were
> more in the 2 .. 5 range. Bit twiddeling and accurate timing will favour
> assembly (sometimes enough to reverse the advantage of an HLL into a
> disadvantge), complex HLL constructs (when used appropriately!!!) (like
> arrays, floating point, and some OO constructs) will favour a HLL.
>
> I give programming classes in both HLL (C, C++) and assembler (PIC, ARM)
> to both electronics and informatics students. It will not be a surprise
> that the informatics students are better at programming, but in my
> experience the difference is more pronounced for HLL programming than
> for assembler programming. Or to put it in another way: electronics
> students are comparatively better at assembler programming. I don't know
> why, but this might partly explain why the piclist community is more
> assembler-oriented than most other groups I know.
>
> Wouter van Ooijen
>
> -- -------------------------------------------
> Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
> consultancy, development, PICmicro products
> docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
>
>
>
>
> --
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>



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