AVR-Chat

I agree with both sides of this debate.  I'm a long time programmer and 
I can write in assembler with several controllers as easily as I can 
code in C.  I think assembly and the data sheets are a must for serious 
embedded work.  However, I've taught in the local community college and 
have found that it is a rare thing that folks are ready for that kind of 
thing and I use Bascom AVR and the data sheets to ease the newcomers 
more gently into the embedded automation world.  It has worked for kids 
where I taught a class at DU to gifted and talented teenagers as well as 
a capstone class to technicians from Anhaiser Busch for their AAS degrees.

Both approaches work, for two different audiences.

IMO,
DLC

Mike Perks wrote:
> Chuck Hackett wrote:
> 
> 
>>I guess I'd agree with Tom that assembler forces you to KNOW your hardware
>>environment better which is a good thing.  But, just because one is 
>>using a
>>higher level language like C doesn't relieve you from having to know 
>>quite a lot
>>about the hardware - assuming you're interacting with the world 
>>outside the chip
>>which is the point in microcontrollers.
>>
>>For the beginner you have to have a deeper understanding of the 
>>hardware, etc.
>>before you can get your first "Hello World" program working: stack 
>>management,
>>processor initialization, etc., etc.  Heck, in microcontrollers you 
>>have to
>>understand how to manage a UART/USART before you'll see the "Hello 
>>World".  But
>>Then again, I guess the microcontroller equivalent of "Hello World" is 
>>to blink
>>an LED which does make things easier <g>.
> 
> 
> Ok good, now we can get some debate going. I know in the end we will 
> agree to disagree but I would to present some other cases that you may 
> not be aware of.  It is true that even for programming in C for AVRs you 
> need to worry about things like clock frequencies, UBRR registers for 
> baud rates, I/O ports and registers etc etc
> 
> Now suppose you had a programming environment that abstracts all of 
> these details and gives you a large function library to do serial I/O, 
> blink an LED and send "hello world" to a console connected over a serial 
> port. Here is a simple program:
>     Sub Main()
>         Console.WriteLine("Hello World!")
>         Do
>             Call PutPin(D.7, 1)
>             Call Sleep(0.1)  ' IEEE single-precision floating point 
> number support
>             Call PutPin(D.7, 0)
>             Call Sleep(0.1)
>         Loop
>     End Sub
> 
> The program prints "Hello World!" to COM1 and blinks a LED at 5Hz. No 
> stack management, no manipulation of the UART, no processor 
> initialization etc. This program was written using the ZX-24 chip that I 
> mentioned before (http://www.zbasic.net/ ). The equivalent code in C (or 
> ASM) even using a function library like AVRLibC is harder to create, 
> download and debug. As I hinted before ZBasic has a large function 
> library that covers everything from SPI, I2C to datatype conversions to 
> InputCapture and ShiftIn to Multitasking.
> 
> I started with microprocessors using ZBasic (and its competitor BasicX) 
> and now I moving into learning more AVR-C and assembler. This path makes 
> sense for me and I would think a lot of beginners because as we have 
> said before, it hides a lot of the details and allows you to get a 
> program going so much more quickly. Coming at it from the other 
> direction, it can also allow you to prototype an idea very quickly and 
> easily without getting buried in the programming. Of course there are 
> exceptions such as high frequency DDS waveform synthesis which needs 
> total control and assembler code to achieve the best results.
> 
> I have an article on my website that is an Introduction to ZBasic and 
> compares it to C, ASM and other programming architectures. On my 
> projects page I have a complete description for a recently completed 
> AVR-based Metronome project.
> 
> Mike
> http://home.austin.rr.com/perks/micros/Articles/
> http://home.austin.rr.com/perks/micros/Projects/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 

-- 
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Dennis Clark          TTT Enterprises
www.techtoystoday.com
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