Porting PicBASIC Pro to mikroBASIC - Possible for Beginner?

[Dale Stewart]

Hi

I am a newbie to PICmicro and UCs...dumb questions to follow:

I have some experience in hobby programming VB, Java, C ( little bit ), but am new to uCs and programming them.

Do you think it will be easy to port PicBASIC Pro ( PBP ) code to mikroBASIC? How about BASIC Stamp code to mikroBASIC?

Do you think that PBP is worth all that money for a beginner?, or should I learn on mikroBASIC and try and adapt PBP code later ( I have some PBP books arriving from Amazon )?

Is mikroBASIC and mikroPASCAL more suited to PICs than C ( others have said elsewhere that C is not a good target for C )?

Is anyone using mikroBASIC or mikroPascal for professional use?

By the way - mikroBASIC and mikroPASCAL looks like great software. It is at least half the price of PBP + IDE.

Thanks - even if you like to answer only one question!

Dale

[rajkovic]

Hi

Do you think it will be easy to port PicBASIC Pro ( PBP ) code to mikroBASIC? How about BASIC Stamp code to mikroBASIC?

Dale

Yes its very easy to port PBP to mikroBasic because almost all you have in PBP you have in mikroBasic, but if you use mikroBasic you may find that there is a lot things that you can do with mikroBAsic that you can not in PBP.

[Steve]

I am a C++ programmer by day and tried at first to use this knowledge to bootstrap PIC programming. What I found was that the structure I was used to does not translate well to 8-bit micro-controllers.

I decided that MikroBasic was a much better fit and now I am very happy with the decision.

I would recommend that you forget abot PBP and just go with MikroBasic. You should be able to tanslate the PBP code in your books easily to MB. MB is very easy to learn and once you start getting proficient you won't need to go to anything else.




Best Regards




Steve

[Dale Stewart]

Correction: ( blame my keyboard ):

Is mikroBASIC and mikroPASCAL more suited to PICs than C ( others have said elsewhere that C is not a good target for PICmicro )?

Cheers

Dale

[pizon]

Is mikroBASIC and mikroPASCAL more suited to PICs than C ( others have said elsewhere that C is not a good target for PICmicro )?

10 years ago this would be a matter of serious and heavy-argumented discussion. Today, it is (practically) a matter of taste (i.e. of libraries available for certain platform).

[bimbla]

In professional applications (at a later stage) speed may become a criterion. But by then, we (you and I) beginners will have become better programmers capable of writing efficient code.

I took to mB because it allows you to write the way you visualise and talk.
Most importantly, being easy and simple it motivates you to begin coding TODAY.

bimbla.

[LGR]

Programming microcontrollers is a different art from programming computers. This biggest difference is the limited RAM. It requires a different approach, and a different mindset. You have to process data "on the fly", and not buffer everything in RAM.

Its like trying to live and work in a small boat, v.s. a large house. You don't have all of the room and facilities to arrange everything the way you want. But you adapt, and get by, or else admit that you need a larger target machine.

Your approach to testing and debugging is also different. You don't have standard I/O (terminal). And forget all the GUI stuff from VB. This is the way it was done in the old days (the first product ever produced by microsoft (1975) was a BASIC interpreter for the 8080 which fit in 3.8K of ram! To this day, that may have been their most remarkable acheivement.).

[zristic]

In professional applications (at a later stage) speed may become a criterion. But by then, we (you and I) beginners will have become better programmers capable of writing efficient code.

The more professional you become, the more simple solutions you will seek.