On Feb 20, 2008, at 10:41 AM, Chuck Harris wrote: > Robert Vassar wrote: > >> I regard PIC chips as something to be avoided. Horrible little >> architecture that should have died back in the 70's. It gained a >> foothold with hobbyists due to the ease with which they can be >> programmed. > > Wow! I guess I should stop using them.
Not at all. Embedded products generally have higher quality needs than general purpose computing as we've come to know it today. Let's face it, when a traffic light controller or a military device wanders off the end of a null pointer people die. You're a pro, you understand these problems. Engineering is compromise. Use the tools you feel comfortable with that allow you to do your job. As a software professional that plays with uC's for fun, not work, I'm going to choose something that doesn't use oddball word lengths, and has a nice orthogonal instruction set with a rich set of addressing modes. I learned the '51 back in high school 20+ years ago. If someone else was going to pick up a uC arch from scratch for hobby purposes, I would probably recommend the AVR. > > And I assume they have them in 6 or 8 pin surface mount with 4 or 5 > ADC > channels, and a built in clock oscillator that has a better than > 1% accuracy over the full military/industrial temperature range? SiLabs makes some very remarkable derivatives, which I've not had the pleasure to play with. I'm not sure they get down to the 6 or 8 pin point. > > Oh, and I forgot, a uart on every pin? Why on earth? No... I don't want to know. :-) > > PIC's are the greatest little problem solvers in existence. > s/PIC\'s/uC\'s/ and we agree.... > >> >> and have an arch better suited to C. > > Who cares? Anyone trying to make a C compiler for the chip? Anyone concerned about the quality of the compiler, mixed language use ala C with assembly, or code portability? > > -Chuck Harris, Not a hobbyist! > > I have to confess, I'm rather surprised at your passion for the PIC. But hey... I spend all day working on Solaris and Linux, and use a Mac everywhere else just to be 100% Microsoft free. So while I'm surprised, I can understand it. :-) Cheers, Rob , "software engineer", but uC hobbyist... _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
