I have to disagree here, especially for PIC there are many very good helpers and tutorials. When I started with PICs just downloaded a free online book and read it, Then wrote as many led flashers and whatsoever that needed to get those things clear up. In the meantime read you guys wrote here + Microchip forum + Google +++ . Much easier than old times, where I had only one book for 6502, and only a disassembler and a hex editor to enter my code. When I wanted to ask someone who knew 6502 I had to wait till summer for the AUGE (if you guys live here in Europe still remember what is this acronym stands for?), so had to wait for AUGE getting together and find someone who had enough time for me to explain. Way more easy to learn nowadays, but many people tend to be more lazy: "I can ask it on forum so why bother to read articles and books? Plus why bother to understand algorithms when I can download one that works - if not I can ask people to fix it for me.." Also it's a bit of problem that people things that microcontrollers are microcomputers. There is an CPU, ALU, memory and can write a "program" on it using C or Basic.... Tamas On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 1:15 PM, David Meiklejohn wrote: > sergio masci wrote: > > > > Trying > > to learn something from scratch on your own seems to be a bigger > > challenge > > now than it used to be 30 years ago. For one thing, reference books > > were > > incredible works compared to most of the junk that comes out today. > > > > It is easy to find an incorrect explination and for that to hamper you > > as > > you are trying to learn. > > Indeed that's one of the problems with the Internet. Who do you trust? > > For example, there's a ton of PIC tutorials out there (including mine). > How > do you know what's useful? Many of them teach bad habits, such as using > absolute mode. Some things are just plain wrong. Heck, I've found errors > in my own tutorials when I've gone back and revised them! > > Glancing at my own bookshelf, I see "6502 Software Design" by Leo J. > Scanlon, and "68000 Assembly Language Programming", by Kane, Hawkins and > Leventhal, both published in 1981 and both of which I learned a great deal > from - plenty of good advice in both. Certainly I haven't seen every PIC > book out there, but what I have seen just isn't up to that standard. > > > David > > > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > -- Rudonix DoubleSaver http://www.rudonix.com -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist