On Tue, 17 Jun 2008, Tamas Rudnai wrote:

> 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

Sorry Tamas you've missed the point. You've already had your "baptism of 
fire" with the 6502 so it is easier for you to know what you want to look 
for when looking at a new MCU. Someone who does not have your experience 
has to do a hell of a lot of learning before he even has a chance of 
understanding how to implement arrays in assembler let alone that he 
should be looking for a special addressing mode (indexing / indirect / 
base relative / etc). Then for the PIC he needs to see the connection 
between the addressing mode and the FSR and somehow tie that in with the 
use of IND (which as we know is a special case of direct addressing with 
the address field in the instruction set to 0).

To put this another way: how do you do a search for details of indirect 
addressing on a PIC if you don't even know what indirect addressing is 
(let alone what it is called).

Yes there are lazy people but I have come to belive that many people that 
would like to use a cheap MCU like the PIC are simply overwhelmed by how 
much there is to learn.

Regards
Sergio Masci
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