Decline of PicBasic ?

[Art]

Oh man, you can cross me off the list sorry Scampy, I have long moved away!
PBP can’t support newer devices simply because PBP compiles to 8 bit RISC assembler, and would have to be entirely rewritten to support dsPic or Pic32.
I still visit in some effort to stay fresh because I maintain PBP is still my choice if a task does call for an 8 bit controller, but I don’t find that exciting at all.
PBP has (had) far more going for it in terms of transparency, and it’s use as a stepping stone than the Arduino environment will ever have.

It’s never been the job of a language or compiler to support any particular hardware unless that language or compiler came part and parcel with a particular computer.
Any serial display is far less complicated to interface with than an HD44780 character display. There are only libraries already existing for the Arduino ecosystem that
make things easier. PBP certainly does support any display that Arduino can though.

The best thing you could do for yourself is to move as far as possible away from the PBP manual, which is full of bad practice in it’s own examples,
and also as far away as possible from it’s canned library routines (commands).
Did you know that to write to a character LCD only requires the control of a port and two pins without any use of LCDOUT?
At least assuming it’s permanently wired to write as they typically are.

LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE:
enable = 1; // set enable pin
RS = 0; // set data or instruction (0 = instruction)
port = bytevalue
delay
enable = 0 //
RETURN

LCDSENDDATABYTE:
enable = 1; // set enable pin
RS = 1; // set data or instruction (1 = data)
port = bytevalue
delay
enable = 0 //
RETURN

That’s it! It only takes two more small routines to entirely abstract away the LCD hardware to the same extent that LCDOUT does.
There’s never a time in any real program that the string “Hello World” will be available at your fingertips.
Data always arrives byte by byte from somewhere, and that is how PBP canned commands and manual examples are a hinderance.

byte = $FE : GOSUB LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE // clear display
byte = $01 : GOSUB LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE
byte = $FE : GOSUB LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE // return home
byte = $02 : GOSUB LCDSENDINSTRUCTIONBYTE

Get some ASCII data from serial:

FOR i = 0 TO 20
SERIN byte : GOSUB LCDSENDDATABYTE
NEXT i

All untested and quite impractical pseudo code of course (though will mostly be right), and some delays are needed,
and in four bit mode, bytes are set nibbles a a time,
but enough to catch the drift, and closer to a normal cyclic program flow than manual examples.
The PBP manual doesn’t really give any good example of how a program would really work. only proper syntax.

[Ioannis]

You are correct in using the registers directly. PBP does not always support hardware modules, like I2C using only software.

But on the other hand, PBP gives this easy of use and piece of mind in a, say, LCDOUT $fe,line1,"Hello!".

What's the use of PBP if one needs to do some asm or C like digging into the registers?

Ioannis

[Scampy]

You are correct in using the registers directly. PBP does not always support hardware modules, like I2C using only software.

But on the other hand, PBP gives this easy of use and piece of mind in a, say, LCDOUT $fe,line1,"Hello!".

What's the use of PBP if one needs to do some asm or C like digging into the registers?

Ioannis

I have to agree. I dare say most things like TFT screens, Ethernet etc that doesn't have native commands in PBP could be used could work with the aid of asm code etc, but then IMO that then defeats the object of using PBP.

[mpgmike]

PBP simplifies working with SFRs over ASM. For example:

ASM
MOVLW 0x60
BANKSEL OSCCON1
MOVWF OSCCON1
ENDASM

versus:

OSCCON1 = $60

More & more I manipulate Registers manually, but in PBP where practical. I reserve ASM for time sensitive operations. Even without PBP Commands to do everything possible, the PBP IDE Suite is certainly more user-friendly than MPLABX.

A mentor once told me, "Instead of complaining something should be done, go and do it!" I can appreciate the frustration of not being able to get a PIC to do what you want it to do, and it's convenient to blame something other than yourself, like PBP or Microchip. With much discussion about Audrino, take it for a test drive, see if you like it better than PIC/PBP. Perhaps take the time to read the Data Sheets and Application Notes/Technical Bulletins available. What I have found is there is always a way to get it to work; I just needed to learn how.

Admitted, I work with PIC & PBP as part of my job. As a hobby I don't think I would devote as much time & resources to educating myself. However, when all else fails, Read the directions/Data Sheet/Application Note/Technical Bulletin/book.

[richard]

I dare say most things like TFT screens, Ethernet etc that doesn't have native commands in PBP could be used could work with the aid of asm code etc, but then IMO that then defeats the object of using PBP.

while thats true a pbp that can incorporate external libraries and the sort of memory management needed to support them would not resemble the existing version in any familiar way. it would also need to support all the existing on chip hw modules and pps, not to mention have realtime source level debugging. [xc8free does all that and more]
if you look around all the pic 8bit forums are pretty quiet and getting quieter , a few have diappeared . its not an enviroment to inspire investment .

perhaps we could add a couple of new dimensions to the forum

xc8 and asm

and be more like a pic8 support group. pic hardware is pic hardware and pbp is stalled ,but we can still learn .

any thoughts ?

ps i have not joined the microchip forum , i do look but have not found it particularly useful

[Ioannis]

ps i have not joined the microchip forum , i do look but have not found it particularly useful

I did but initially was not treated very friendly...

Anyway, as many said, select the proper tool for the job.

PBP is not for SD cards or Ethernet (natively that is). So, either use a module to do this or XC8 or ... Arduino.

For me PBP gives me a very speedy project development for the things it can do.

I wish and also asked Melabs for the 16/32 bit support and I thing it will come one day, but not tomorrow.

Ioannis

[Art]

LCDOUT isn’t a particularly slow command, but a better example I thought of in English is if you only ever send one byte at a time with an LCD,
you inherently strip the dead delay that LCDOUT has to put between bytes, because you can be using that delay to process the next byte live.
So everything is faster for something simple, and that’s still PBP.

Hmm the Microchip company forum, I haven’t found bad reception there when I do use it, more that either none can answer the question,
or just haven’t been very helpful for a specific problem for one reason or another. Better help with C or assembler stuff I have found on other forums altogether.

[Art]

What's the use of PBP if one needs to do some asm or C like digging into the registers?

For the use of any language or platform other than PBP, which might be around forever,
but it's supported pics become less & less appropriate for a project as better peripheral devices come along.
If you used any PBP supported pic to control an ESP8266 for example, the peripheral chip is much more powerful,
and the PBP program and hardware it’s running on could only hinder the entire project,
and also require the unnecessary part that is the PBP microcontroller.

I wouldn’t want to even think about using PBP to interface with an SD card with any standard file system.

Most importantly though, every PBP manual example that could possibly block code execution when it doesn’t have to, does.
Typically a programmer aims for the illusion of the program doing multiple tasks simultaneously, which becomes harder and harder with blocking code.

Arduino does assist with this, but it isn’t C that is anything like PBP in this way, only libraries that others have written.
Arduino is also another trap that is limited in ways because it hides workings from the user in a similar manner PBP does,
to prevent the user having to think about it, and also prevent them breaking things.
Arduino is essentially C, but doesn’t do much to help anyone learn much about any other C compiler (for example).