Which uController to learn?
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From: Tim Wescott on 16 Mar 2007 14:08 John E. wrote: >>I will mention that for most microprocessors the verb is "use", but for >>PIC it's "suck it up and use" -- Microchip does a sterling job with >>peripherals, pin drive and features, but gawd I hate their architecture. > > > Which just *begs* the question: whose architecture do you consider to be the > antithesis of the PIC's? (ie, less obtuse, resulting in your being more > productive?) Almost anything but an 8051? Actually, just about anything that has a stack-oriented architecture, or a register-oriented architecture with an orthogonal instruction set and decent indexing. If I can, with confidence, slam a bunch of parameters onto the stack or into some registers and call a function without worry, then I'm happy. The PIC (and the 8051, and some others) are so poor at stack usage and pointer manipulation that unless one wants severely inefficient code one pretty much has to define all the program data as a bunch of globals. If you try to make your life more efficient by programming in C, you'll find that the C compilers for the PIC and 8051 give you a choice between something that isn't quite C, or C code that's _really_, _really_ inefficient. If you want to write assembly using C calling conventions -- well, find another processor, because you can't. -- Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services http://www.wescottdesign.com Posting from Google? See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/ "Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April. See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
From: John E. on 16 Mar 2007 14:50 > Actually, just about anything that has a stack-oriented architecture, or > a register-oriented architecture with an orthogonal instruction set and > decent indexing. Being a beginner in all this, I have no experience / reference to be able to put product names to these capabilities. Would you "name names" please? I'll create a diversion to take all the flames while you do that... (c: -- John English
From: Anthony Fremont on 16 Mar 2007 15:19 John E. wrote: >> I will mention that for most microprocessors the verb is "use", but >> for PIC it's "suck it up and use" -- Microchip does a sterling job >> with peripherals, pin drive and features, but gawd I hate their >> architecture. > > There's a pattern developing in this thread... Yes there certainly is. You've discovered the pic haters, welcome to my world. ;-) Once you learn to use several different archetectures, you'll see that they all suck in one way or another. 8052's are dumb in how they deal with internal/external storage and also their "output" vs "input" methods suck too because they don't have true directional i/o pins. AVRs, TI MSP430 and the rest all have their problems too whether it be an inabillity to supply drive current to a part or some other deficiency. They all have trade-offs. What you're seeing here is an unfair attack on PICs that seems to be made mostly by people that have hardly (if ever) used one, Tim excluded. As you said, PIC is king and it is for a reason, they work.
From: TT_Man on 16 Mar 2007 15:20 "John E." <incognito(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:0001HW.C220350A0041BFCBF01826C8(a)news.sf.sbcglobal.net... >> Actually, just about anything that has a stack-oriented architecture, or >> a register-oriented architecture with an orthogonal instruction set and >> decent indexing. > > Being a beginner in all this, I have no experience / reference to be able > to > put product names to these capabilities. Would you "name names" please? > I'll > create a diversion to take all the flames while you do that... (c: > -- > John English > I thought 51's had a decent stack and register structure. I've used them since 1976... (Intel 8731?) I found the instruction set entirely logical and usable with an easy learning curve. The OP is a beginner and needs something simple to get going with. The 51 does what it says on the tin. The Dallas 450 version ,you can get up and running in an afternoon with a couple of support chips.
From: TT_Man on 16 Mar 2007 15:22
> As you said, PIC is king and it is for a reason, they work. > Only if you can get to grips with the appalling op code set..... OK if you can program in C , I suppose.I can't/won't |