Quote Originally Posted by mister_e
In the market you have at this time 4 different known Basic Compiler
  • 1. Melabs PICBASIC PBC and PRO
    2. MBASIC
    3. Crownhill PROTON
    4. MikroBasic

Wich is the first one? Wich one is the most known ? Wich one will give you wider support ?

MELABS PICBASIC PRO.

MikroBasic and others are certainely good but, IMO still young on the market. If you choose MikroBasic then... we will not be able to give you any kind of support.
It is interesting to note that most of the people in the Proton forum are (or at least were) PICBasic Pro users. Another interesting thing to note is that the guy who writes the Proton compiler is the same guy who wrote "Experimenting With PICBasic Pro".

I have no beef with PBP at all. It's a great compiler. It's just that the PDS (Proton Development Suite) is everything that PBP is and more. They're constantly in a state of development. I read some of the posts in this forum, regarding how to do this or that, and then I find that Proton already has a command that takes care of it. In my humble opinion, if you can't afford both, you should go with Proton. Now, to be fair, I think the reason that PBP seems to have become a "dead language" (no sharp objects please) is because of the problem of software piracy. What's the point of putting in all of this effort if only a handful of people pay for it and everybody else steals it. Why bother? Crownhill has taken the step of requiring a USB dongle to compile your code. This is a bit of a pain and a bit stressfull (what if you lose the dongle?), but in the long run I think this actually will protect their profits. More profits means more incentive to continue developing the product, and I'm willing to put up with a bit of an inconvenience for the sake of innovation. I'm sure that somebody, if they took the time, could figure out how to defeat the dongle. But any engineer with this kind of talent probably wouldn't stoop to being a thief (at least I'd like to think so).

Anyway, PIC on everyone. I still come to this site for ideas now and then, but I have moved on to PDS and honestly doubt I'll be dragging out my PBP compiler any time soon.

Cheers.