Is BASIC dead ?

[pedja089]

Last month I was helping colleague to finish his project for master, and he was using microC. To test hardware we just put some LCD print's, and monitor 4 inputs and count pulses on inputs, let say not more than 100 lines, and that used about 7K of code space, and it take almost 40mS for one pass without LCD...
Tried same with PBP and it took less than few mS with LCD print...

[dsicon]

right, this is why we need to wave the flag and beat the drums about how fast PBP3 executes and how easy to use PBP3 is,
people hear 'basic' and they get all snooty
but i guess there is also some difference in how people's brains are wired these days, i don' think they teach or maybe even mention basic anymore

[Charlie]

The vast majority of Microsoft macros are written in visual basic, and it's one of their key languages for developers, so the language is far from dead.
Write in what makes you comfortable. If you hope to get a job with your firmware skills, learn C. That's not new - been that way for 20 years at least.
If you already know basic, why would you use anything else?

[fowardbias]

I don't know if BASIC is dead, it does seem to take a back seat to C++ with the newer microcontroller development systems. I am more concerned about getting the 18F97J94 series added to the PB3 list. This series with the V-bat feature has an auto shutdown which allows for context saving of the data. It is the only 8-bit MC chip that will do this. We can still do all of the sleep modes(with other chips) because PBP2.6C allows in-line assembly, direct register access and handmade macros. This is will work but can be a total pain. I believe if MeLabs were to add this chip it would help many of us out there using solar or stand alone battery systems. Well, hope it happens. I noticed no recent updates to PB3? Is is running solid with the new MCS? Just a concerned hobbyist.

[rsocor01]

The first program language that I learned was Basic. Then, it came Fortran, Cobol and so on. C language came much later for me. So, needless to say that I feel much more comfortable programming PICs in Basic.

One thing is for sure. MELabs needs to keep up with the newest chips in order not to follow behind. It might be that in 10 or 20 years from now, the chips that we are used to program now will be outdated or discontinued by that time.

[Pista1]

I also very much hope PBP will be here for a long time to come. I agree with everyone who commented before me that the website of MELabs could be upgraded to reflect the PBP3 changes. Also based on my personal experience beginners would benefit from more very basic examples (in BASIC of course).
3-4 years ago I started with PBP and never regretted it. After making a couple of LED flashing circuits, I put together my first EKG simulator program which was less than 50 lines and used only 5 or 6 of the available commands of the many of PBP programming languages. I got quite a kick out of it that the world famous manufacturer’s 12 Lead EKG Arrhythmia Analyzer after reading my PBP program generated EKG simulation gave it a “Normal Sinus Rhythm Normal EKG” label.

The Forum is a great help. As I see it when the forum took off everybody was kind of a beginner and this was the good time to start. New beginners who came later to the game often received the infamous advice from now grown up PBP experts: “read the manual!” Certainly excellent advice: read the manual. But how to read the manual is an art to itself.
In summary I think the gurus are taken care of but the complete beginners could use a lot of help from us and MElabs.

Steve

[HenrikOlsson]

Yes, we've ALL been beginners at one point or another.
The problem is that there are a couple of regular users here. Then there are a lot of users who only pop in when they have an issue they need help with.
This means that the regular users have to answer the same questions (analog features needs to be disabled, how do you handle the configuration words and why does pin x change state when I write to pin y) over and over again.

IMHO RTFM type responses (preferably with a reference to a relevant section IN the manual) is valid when the answer to the question clearly IS stated in the manual. Sometimes it might just have been overlooked.

With Darrels unfortunate and sad departure this forum is now, as far as I know, without any MeLabs representative.

So, what do you want MeLabs to concentrate on?
1) Writing beginner tutorials and answering the same type of question over and over again or
2) Improving the core of PBP and adding features and chips, letting the forum users handle (1) above?

Personally I'd prefer (2) but in the end MeLabs has to do what's needed to keep the sales up - whatever that may be.

All WE can really do is stick around and help each other out the best we can.

/Henrik.