I watched this video with some interest Micheal and would agree that if you are already an Arduino IDE convert, then the Pico is a great platform. However, (as I may have mentioned previously) I gave up the Arduino IDE in preference to Micromite Basic (MMB) some time ago and I have never regretted it.

I've never been a 'professional' programmer (and now never will be). I'm self-taught and still learning, so I'm afraid I spend some time just trying to find my own mistakes. It's a great benefit to be able to quickly 'edit, run, edit, run again' and the ability to keep versions of code 'on-chip' (in flash-files) really speeds up this de-bugging process too. Add the fact that MMB is ported to the specific chip and directly supports it's avaialble hardware features 'in-language' (so usually no need for 'opaque' libraries – IR, IC2, PWM etc). MMB is also very well documented. The 'chip' specific manuals are typically 170+ pages, clearly written and actively updated by version release.

There are three versions of MMB for the Pico. A standard Picomite for embedded control (with LCD screeen support), a PicomiteVGA for applications that need VGA output and the Webmite which is a version of MMB for the Pico W. Details of all three can be found in the link below and I would suggest downloading the manual(s) to fully understand what a great solution the Picomite is for many embedded control applications.

Picomite Description and Downloads

So, if I seem somewhat evangelical about the Picomite, it's because I am. There are better known (e.g. publicised) 'micro' solutions but the Picomite is the best thing since sliced bread for programming numpties like myself.

Piocomite – a self-contained micro-system on a chip for £3-4. I urge folk to give it a look.

Regards,

IanT

I was a professional programmer, paid to write in COBOL(s), FORTRAN(s), Filetab, C, C++, Sculptor, Perl, Informix-4GL, SQL, MS-BASIC, Visual-Basic, Pick-BASIC, and Delphi (Pascal-like). Also for my employer, I wrote reports on the applicability of Algol, Forth, BASIC, LISP, Pilot, Pascal, Python and Ada. Plus a comparison of the vices and virtues of the competing RDBMS of the day. Not only can I write BASIC, more than one variant, but I've had plenty of experience with other languages in all applications apart from real-time.

I'm afraid BASIC doesn't fare well in a professional programming environment. One difficulty is the large number of different versions of 'BASIC' – it's poorly standardised, leading to low portability and high re-training costs. There are many other irritants.

Early BASIC was narrowly focussed on allowing ordinary folk to interact with a computer, mainly to hint at possibilities. A simple language with no pretensions, the first BASIC was never intended to be more than a demonstrator. Unfortunately, its simplicity meant BASIC was fairly easy to implement on early 8 bit microcomputers, and it became popular in the hobby community, gradually adding many non-standard improvements.

BASIC's fluidity was no problem for singletons with home computers, but youngsters moved on to Computer Science courses, and started in IT Departments with their heads full of BASIC bad habits, that had to be painfully unlearned. Folk who had started with BASIC didn't make good use of the clarity provided by structured languages : they mangled Pascal by expressing logic in BASIC terms. And BASIC didn't support teams of developers. Meanwhile, computer languages had moved on, introducing features that BASICs haphazardly adopted later in non-standard ways. Although modern BASICs look respectable because they've adopted modern features like structured code and objects, BASIC is messy. BASIC's shortcomings turn nasty as programs grow in size and complexity. OK for small simple stuff. All big systems are hard to maintain, but big systems written in BASIC are extra tough. Trouble is most programs don't start out intending to become big and complex, but they often grow like Topsy as users ask for more features.

Today there's no call for BASIC in the world of jobs or academe. BASIC's main benefit is for hobbyists who started with on a ZX80 or BBC Micro, who want to do similar hobby programming on a microcontroller. Fair enough – it reduces the learning curve. But taking that short-cut ain't smart for anyone who wants to earn a living as a programmer, is serious about getting the best out of a microcontroller, or is starting a large project.

Under no circumstances should youngsters be encouraged to start by learning BASIC. In an IT job interview they will be asked to explain why they chose BASIC. They'd better have a good reason, and I don't believe there is one! Choosing BASIC means you don't understand the history, or why other languages are more suitable, or didn't question what their misinformed Elmer said. Being easy to learn is only one factor – grown-up programming needs much, much more. For example, BASIC is inferior to:

• Horrible old COBOL for Data Processing
• FORTRAN for Maths
• C/C++ for system, embedded and software tool programming
• Javascript & Java for web work
• C# for smart phones
• Python for general purpose computing

I see in the 2022 IEEE list of Top Programming Languages that only one BASIC is listed: Visual Basic is 29th between VHDL and Labview.

The only good reason for using BASIC today is you already know it and don't need better. Good choice for tinkerers who already have BASIC skills, bad choice as a starter language for everybody else.

Dave

Robert A2. It may well be that the Pico is a bit of an overkill compared to simpler (and cheaper) 'PIC' chips but for £3 each (which is what I paid recently) it's not an issue in practice if I don't use all of the Pico's capabilities. I'm not building commercial systems to ship in volume. You can also install the Picomite just by dragging the UF2 file to it over USB (so no PIC programmer required). It is a fully functional system (so no need to buy extra PCBs, connectors or components) and there are a large range of Pico 'Accessories' available (that work equally well with a Picomite as with any other software). The Pico can also be purchased in smaller footprints (I have some "Zero's" from Waveshare that work well as Picomites).

So Picomite – quick and easy to use, powerful enough for most control applications, available (which has been very useful these past several years) and of course very affordable.

So I'll qualify my original recommendation – "the Picomite is the best thing since sliced bread for programming numpties like myself" – who do not intend to programme for a living, who don't work as part of a software team, who don't have any experience of programming 'PIC' chips and who have other (better) things they want to do with their spare time in addition to the odd bit of embedded controller work…

How's that, anyone else here fit that description?

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 22/08/2023 15:01:47

Index, and HP RMB (Rocky Mountain Basic) was a wonderful environment for creating instrument control and analysis applications. Wrote many many thousands of lines in that. For example, producing software that had a 6 metre parabolic microwave antenna whizzing round whilst collecting receive data and generating contour plots was great fun.

Andy

I fully accept that any BASIC is not what you should start to learn IF you want to be a prpfessional programmer, but I still maintan it ahas a place. Mostly for the reasons SOD said ( Our posts crossed so I didn't see his before hitting "add" on mine.

I'm going to get on my soapbox now…

One of the "things" I have against Arduinos, RPi's (and a lesser extent Python generally) is the "loads of pre-written stuff ". This allows people with little understanding to "make" things. The quality of the things is variable and if it doesn't work its hard to troubleshoot. It also, IMO, normalises bloatware. It cetainly does not promote understanding and efficent use of the available hardware. I'm sure I've mentioned the C comms libary that used all the memory in a PIC when my PBP code used the built in hardware UART.
I have the same issue with electronics "designers" who use modules for everthing. Often these are low cost things from the far east with no proper specifications or instructions. I've had supposedly qualified electronics engineers who could not design a 12V regulator because they awways bought a £2 module off amazon or ebay. When I pointed out that even the 1000 off price of the regulator chip on the board was more than twice the cost of the whole board they didn't see an issue. I immediately think the chips are fake or a lower rated part re-marked.

Rant over.

Robert.

Very much so in the instrument control world of the '80s and '90s. By the late 1980's I had over 65,000 lines of my RMB code in use in the company handling Steam turbine performance test measurements and, latterly, turbine balancing, FFT calculation and vibration management. I'm quite proud of 100 5 1/2digit voltage readings per second spread over five data loggers, all converted into engineering units in real-time. This on a 20MHz 68020… Some of the most time critical bits were written in HP Pascal (which was closer to Modula) and the few tens of lines of really significant stuff were disassembled from Pascal and written in hand-optimised assembler.

Since then, I learned C, did some real-time PIC programming in assembler and C, for fun and profit. Now I'm learning Python in order to make a GUI based database program for all my tools and consumables, with a number of possible database engines to hold the data.

Edited By Mark Rand on 22/08/2023 21:27:07

Modula? My second compiler I wrote was for Modula; got the specs out of "Software Practice and Experience" as written by N. Wirth; it's first use was to write an OS for a custom integrated circuit tester (both the ICs and the testers were custom).

Thanks for the flash-back from the past! JohnS.