topic Re: Old dog, no C in 8-bit Microcontrollers

Old dog, no C

UtopiaTim — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:34:09 GMT

Hi folks,

Well, after 29 years of designing & writing code

for micros, I guess it's time to bite the bullet &

learn C.

Anybody have some good info on how to learn C for

micros? Books, Ap notes, etc

Freescale 08s would be good to start on,

as I already have some knowledge of the parts &

a Cyclone with CW08. (plus a new project coming

down the pike that uses USB)

Thanks a bunch!

woof

Tim

Re: Old dog, no C

ballen — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 08:15:03 GMT

Tim,

Although it's not specifically for micros, "Software Engineering in C" by Peter Darnell is great and used is only a buck at Abe Books (out-of-print, paperback, so check condition). It's still the only book on C that I own or use even though it's almost 20 years old.

Bill

Re: Old dog, no C

Curt — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:44:12 GMT

Hi Old dog.

Why C? You probably have a lot of experience with assembly -- and IMHO its the "right" choice for most embedded MCU apps anyway. (You won't be seduced into thinking that function calls or floating point ops. are "free," for example.) And you CAN do USB apps. in assembly. Take a look at "USB Design by Example" by John Hyde as a good 8051-oriented intro.

Re: Old dog, no C

UtopiaTim — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:41:31 GMT

Hi Bill/Curt,

Thanks for the info on the book Bill.. I'll check it out. I have a copy of

'C Primer Plus' by Waite/Prata & Martin, and am going through it, although

it is geared more for larger systems. (published in 1984, there weren't

many efficient compilers for micros).

Curt - I agree mostly, but it is such that every ap note I come across seems

to have it's code done in C. In the work that I do, time to project completion

is a major consideration, and if I can leverage some code snippits from an

ap-note, it will save me time (and $).

I understand the tradeoffs of code size, execution speed, etc, and obviously

the time sensitive stuff will still be done in assembly.

It's certainly not an 'end-all' answer, but just another tool in my bag of tricks.

I've perused Amazon's site, & there are a ton of 'C with PICs', but haven't

seen one for Freescale's micros.

Thanks again!

Tim

Re: Old dog, no C

Lundin — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:02:15 GMT

An assembler programmer won't have to worry much about make those efficiency mistakes when writing C though. They all know what's going on behind the C code, as opposed to most PC programmers moving to embedded systems. Also, new microcontrollers are written in such a way that they will yield more effective C code. 8051 is not one of them, it is the least code-effective micro on the market.

(Btw, function calls are free! There is inlining! )

Re: Old dog, no C

thisobj — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:14:35 GMT

Hello Tim,

In addition to books, you can get a good start on learning 'C' by going to Google and typing in:
"C tutorial" or "C programming tutorial" (use the quotes in both cases).

Also, you might want to pick up a copy of the book, "The C Programming Language" ( Second Edition ) (ISBN 0-13-110362-8) by Kernighan and Ritchie, the authors of the language.

Regards,

Frank

Re: Old dog, no C

HarrySun — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:14:40 GMT

hello, I am a similar old dog and now I am using C.

once you use c, you won't get back to assembly any more,it's just so convenient.

in most situations, we don't pursue extreme efficiency and C is just too portabel for applications and it's easy to use...

I used QG8 to learn C,it's 8-bit so it's easy and freescale has a lot ready-made c programms for you to try on,when I don't understand I go back to read book or just surf online.

this way is pretty efficient for an old dog like me.

Re: Old dog, no C

joerg — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:47:08 GMT

Hi Tim

As i am also a old dog, i was used to write my code in assembly (for a lot of MCU's). Back in the 1980's i tried "C" for the first time and my first program showed 65 errors in only 5 lines of code!! At this point i decided that "C" was definitely NOT my language! So after using Pasqual, Modul2 and a lot of BASICs (mainly for PC stuff) last year i decided to try "C" again. The result is that i have rewritten my simple OS in "C" (Info's on www.systech-gmbh.ch -> EBS08). And i must say am not really unhappy with the result. I was also surprised about the code size with is almost as short as my assembly code! I have bought different books for getting some information about "C" but the heavy ones (2kg!) didn't not help really, finally i found the book (bought in 1982!) form Kernighan and Ritchie (original title "The C Programming Language" ) and i find this book helped really. (wight < 300gramms)! Probably you can find it used!

Good luck

Joerg

PS. I hate automatic smiles!!

Message Edited by joerg on 2007-11-16 05:49 PM

Re: Old dog, no C

bigmac — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 06:41:16 GMT

Hello Tim,

Here are a couple of Internet references I have found to be useful -

http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valvano/embed/toc1.htm
http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/cclass/cclass.html

Regards,

Mac

Re: Old dog, no C

UtopiaTim — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:44:23 GMT

Thanks everyone for your information, experiences & links!

That light at the end of the tunnel may not be a train!!

Thanks again,

Tim