I have to disagree a bit (I said a bit, I didn't entirely!). Atmel/8051 based MCU's have been around longer than PICs, they have a larger following, but as far as more powerful? The power is behind the keyboard...not in the chip.
As far as the 'extended' command set goes, if you have written yourself a nice set of PBP extensions (see the Forum topic of the same name), you can easily INCLUDE them for easy access just as a normal PBP command, well, almost as easily. For instance, the PRINTSTR functions that I use for the graphic LCDs, I include 'nokiaknockoff.bas' into my main program. The 'nokiaknockoff.bas' file has the PBP code along with assembly extensions and I access those commands with a simple:
@ printstr 5,6,"this is my function"
inline with my normal PBP code...simple as that.
If you are able to get decent DMXIN/DMXOUT subroutines running, you can easily do the same, whether it be thru a GOSUB or a MACRO.
Of course it's not quite a good as the real thing, but it's a great stepping stone to learning the inner-workings of PBP and compilers in general.
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