At 17:35 28/04/2004 Gavin Denby did say...
There's good stuff there anyway.
I need to continue with micro's, and while I like assembler, (really efficient code.) and I can think in terms of registers. :-) the drive in the industry is have a C front end for the Micro-controller software. So I need to learn C. but that said, yes.
You may be amazed at the advances in C compilers these days, the overhead can be as good as 1% and in most cases none. The worst case I have seen is 3%, but that was some complex coding.. Even coding in C you are still very aware of registers and I tend to code to suite the limitations of the micro in order to avoid stack usage.
I need to write the PC stuff now-days. as everyone wants to control the units we make from a PC, or manipulate the data they have collected.
Tell me about it, if it cannot plug into $3000 of hardware to do anything with it then it is frowned upon<grin>
SO its looking like C++ for now, I'll phone around, someone must be teaching this, and Maybe I can squeeze a seat from a provider where this is just part of a larger course or something
As I mentioned a lot of training providers offer VC++ for the NZQA qualifications, have not found any that offer gcc, but NZQA is owned by mickysoft so what do you expect<grin>
Unless someone has free time and wants to do some tutoring. I tend to try to put in linux solutions, unless I have to put it into windows.
Seriously have a look at Kylix, it may cost, but it is a good RAD solution and an evaluation version can be obtained. Also the teach yourself C books are very good, they assume you have BASIC programming experience or some none at all and they may not make a guru of you, but you will get a solid grounding.
On Wednesday, April 28, 2004, at 05:22 PM, Michael Cree wrote:
I happen to disagree with that, for two reasons:
1) Object oriented programming is hugely overrated. 2) What C++/Java/C# etc compilers are there for microcontrollers?
Having said that, I have to admit C is not a good teaching language as it allows the programmer to program very badly. Other languages impose constraints which force good programming practices, and for learning to program, they are to be preferred.
But, as you say, you aim is to program microcontrollers effectively and efficiently. There is only one language (other than various assembly languages) you need to learn, and that is C. So ignore the computer scientists, who do not know what they are talking about - they have never programmed microcontrollers - and learn C.
I think the best book is Kernighan and Ritchie. They wrote C and in their book they explain the justifications for why C is the way it is. Furthermore they write good C. The main problem is, the book is too expensive and I understand that they are not updating it for C99 (mind you, the second criticism may not be an issue for microcontroller compilers, since due to low sales, are not going to be in a hurry to update their compilers to the new standard).
Having written the above I now see that your history was writing for microcontrollers and now you want to program PCs. Doh. Can't be stuffed rewriting this now....
Michael.
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