Nate, Thank you for your incredibly comprehensive response RE: PIC and AVER programming and the state of that art.
I also started with assembly language on 8085s and Z80s in the late 70s but gradually moved toward C and eventually LabVIEW on higher level machines. I loved the completeness of understanding necessary to do assembly language programming and the microcontroller/microprocessor environment. Over the years I occasionally become interested in embedded uP development, 8051, and PIC originally . Recently, I actually bought a Rabbit environment and have the TI thumb drive setup but, so far I haven't made or found the time to pursue them. Lately, I've become interested in the AVR but once again I haven't had the time to get involved with it. A few weeks ago, one of my LabVIEW clients asked me to try my hand at 'C' language programming a Freescale 9S12. I've been having a great time with it, figuring out how to make all of the various peripherals work in order to develop the project into something useful to my client. I just wish there were better resources' to support this processor. By the way if any readers know of any I'd appreciate references. One of my favorite things about the state of the art is that you don't need a PROM programmer anymore. It's interesting to me that my very old original uP and 'C' language background a still relevant and useful to me. That learning curve you mention wasn't a problem for me at all. The problem I found, was figuring out all of the various uses for the #defines in the header files. I say this, not as a contradiction of your thought but rather as encouragement to your readers that once learned the learning curve can still be useful some 30 years later. Chuck Lippmeier KB1HTO
