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Newsgroups: alt.microcontrollers.8bit,aus.electronics,sci.electronics.design,sci.electronics.misc
Subject: Re: Which basic compiler to buy?
From: "Form@C"
References: <3df64d23$0$161$1b62eedf@news.euronet.nl> <38cc46e8.0212111322.4affa38e@posting.google.com>
Organization: never organised...
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Followup-To: alt.microcontrollers.8bit
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Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 08:58:42 GMT
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 08:58:42 GMT
Just a comment on C from the historical persective:
The principal reason for major OSs being written in C appears to be that
the software manufacturers already have their own libraries of C routines
that they want to reuse simply because they don't want to pay out to get
them in a different format. They now hold copyright over what they have,
and are not going to relinquish it. Thus there is a demand for C
programmers.
The reason that they put any time, money and effort *at all* into
producing the libraries in the first place was that C was being touted as
"the way to go" because of its so-called transportability between
platforms. This has proved to be a fallacy as the libraries have turned
out to be almost as platform specific as assembler! The source is usually
"mostly" compatible between compilers at best - and that is when only the
most rudimentary routines are being written.
At the time that C appeared many languages were in use (many still are).
A lot of these were interprative and were thus tied to specific hardware.
When CP/M came along a lot of the hardware barriers were, if not exactly
removed then, eased. There was a demand for a truly transportable
language that would run on all platforms. Pascal tried, using the P code
system, and was quite successful. Forth tried, using what appears to be a
high level version of a microcontroller core, but that wasn't quite so
successful. The BASIC compilers at the time tended to be inefficient -
mainly because they were all based on MBASIC from, guess, you know who!
C does *not* produce any better code than any other language - given that
an equally good compiler is used. The structure of C does *not* make good
compilers easier to write, in fact some would argue that it makes things
insanely difficult in some cases.
Good code will have a good program structure which is relevent to the
application and good commenting in the source. The language and/or
compiler makes no difference at all. You can write excellent code in
BASIC and really awful code in C.
In reply to the original post:
IMHO I would say look at your application, look at your proposed
platform. Try writing a few short source codes for each language to "get
the feel" for them then look at what appears do the job best. It may be
that BASIC is not the best choice at all for a PIC. You may be better
putting some effort into learning one of the dedicated PIC languages like
JAL, or even assembler - its a lot easier on the PIC than some people
think, particularly if you only need relatively simple stuff.
>>> processor it was originally written for and then tell me that BASIC
>>> is still the way to go...........
>>
> Actually Lisp might produce good code if you can find a vendor. If you
Lisp is so good that Autodesk re-wrote the entire AutoCAD program from
the ground up in C++. They had reached the limits of what it could really
do at Release 10 IIRC - and they had some excellent Lisp programmers...
--
Mick
http://www.mixtel.co.uk for Nascom & Gemini info.
Favourite error: "Keyboard error - Press F1 to continue"
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