I picked up an STM32 board earlier this year and quickly got frustrated=20
with figuring out which tool-chain to use.  Partially because I don't=20
care much for Eclipse, and the community support isn't as good as with=20
PICs.  It's just a lot to learn to get to a simple blinking LED, and I'm=20
not sure I want to spend all the time learning it until I know that ARMs=20
are the right path for me.  This to me is why Arduinos have done so=20
well... not because of the processor/board, but because the tool chain=20
is easy to understand and learning is incremental after quickly getting=20
to a blinking LED.  But then again, I'm not sure if to call the Arduino=20
IDE/compiler a tool-chain, as it's very limited.

Another thing I've noticed is that PICs are very feature/peripheral-rich=20
compared with other processors.

Cheers,
-Neil.


On 8/9/2015 8:48 PM, Bob Blick wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 9, 2015, at 05:22 PM, Sean Breheny wrote:
>
>> I think that the most promising general-purpose hobby micros now are
>> probably either MSP430s and their ilk as well as ARM-cored micros from
>> several vendors like NXP.
> Hi Sean,
> MSP430 is starting to get a little weird. Peripheral locations, which
> used to be constant from part-to-part within a series of parts, are now
> moving around, ala Microchip. And the original gnu compiler, which is
> great, is not being worked on anymore because TI hired Redhat to do a
> new version of it and the original developer sort of saw that as an
> off-ramp, I guess. It's not something I'd want to use right now, uses
> lots more memory and there are bugs. Add to that the new parts with
> extended addressing and MSP430 is kind of a mess right now.
>
> STM32 is pretty cool because everything's so cheap on aliexpress/ebay:
> parts, debugger, development boards.
>
> Best regards, Bob
>

--=20
http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.