A little over a year ago I embarked on a mission to design a new video/expansion/carrier board for the BASIC Stamp 2. I chose a PIC18F252 as the main processor to handle all the communications with the Stamp. Even though I had been utilizing PIC assembly code for many of my projects over the last 12 years, I decided to take an entirely new approach, and use a higher level compiler to hopefully ease my development cycle. Not feeling particularly comfortable with C (not that it isn't a good language, but not in my comfort zone) I decided to give PicBasic Pro a try. Coupling this with Microcode Studio's IDE gave me what I was looking for, and I haven't been at all disappointed (well... it would be nice if it was an optimizing compiler, and I really wish it had better string handling capabilities).

Although the current project is still in process, it is now nearing completion. Something I probably couldn't say if I had been trying to do it entirely in assembly. Not to say that there isn't some assembly code in my source, but it has only been necessary for the interrupt routines, which in my case needed to be very fast. The nice thing is that PicBasic makes adding these interrupt routines, and sharing variables, a relatively easy process. I also liked the fact that both low-level and high-level interrupt support was provided. And last but not least, I have had no lock-ups or ugly blue screens of death appear to ruin my day. The Microcode Studio/PicBasic Pro combination has been an extremely reliable programming tool.

Bottomline, if I had it to do all over again, I would change nothing.