Learning PIC - where to start?

Yes, but I liked the way I heard it better! More picturesque, in a way. And I've "kind of" seen it in action in real life, too, using a chainsaw for chisel-work. An art form of its own, I suppose.

Jon

I knew an old guy who specialized in chainsaw art, and he made some pretty cool things from big logs. I think he preferred Paulownia trees.

Paul

Where's the fun in that? I'm already familiar with "proper" processors.

FWIW, so far as the "brain damage" is concerned, bank-switching seems to be the least of it. I've found the trickiest part being getting my head around all of the logic inversions in conditionals, i.e. skipping the next instruction if the condition holds, but the next instruction is a goto which skips the "meat", and the condition is testing the Z flag (so zero is true) or testing a pin wired to a switch where zero => pressed.

Vladimir,

I've been to your web site and seen some of your work, and it's clear that you're quite talented. I think you're in a position, though, where -- if you wanted to -- you could save some of your own time, expand yor business, etc. by leveraging the work of others. E.g., use free or cheap IDEs, assemblers, math tools, and so on. I agree there's something to be said for building your own tools, but if you can get something like Eclipse for free, is there really much point these days in rolling your own?

The fact that many of the IC manufacturers -- such as Atmel -- are just using open-source tools like GCC and Eclipse these days should be an indication that there's not much profit to be had in building all your own tools from scratch anymore.

That being said... my boss came to me and the other guy I share an office with some months back and wanted to know if we could build what's essentially a dial-in router (POTS interface on one side, Ethernet on the other) for remote access to LANs (the ideal being that you have a backup channel if the building's main Internet connection is down). While there are commercial devices to do this, he wanted something cheaper -- maybe a couple hundred bucks. We told him that the easy way to do this (and meet the price point) is to just get yourself a generic Linux board (or even an off-the-shelf router like the WRT54g series), find a supported USB modem, write a few scripts, and be done with it. He wasn't happy -- he really, really wanted a "built from scratch" solution, being untrusting of the TCP/IP stack in Linux, the model-class USB driver someone else would have written, etc. We told him that, sure, that was doable, but you're probably now talking at least a year of development rather than a couple of months. That pretty much dissuaded him from continuing the discussion...

---Joel

Hey, early microcontrollers like the 8748 only had "add" instructions, so you were always adding the two's complement of a number to do subtraction... and then branching on the "appropriate" flags to see if underflow occurred or whatever.

A great time was had by all. :-)

Microsoft crap is also popular.

Ergo: "popular" != "good". ;-)

Cheers! Rich

In my case, because I've used them before. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Does your boss have the technical chops to question those

--or has he been listening to the bleating crowd about *that software built by amateurs*?

I was reading the Slashdot coverage of the Terry Childs case (the Frisco sysadmin who's in jail for doing his job too well). One guy said that when his (MBA) boss wanted to be in the loop on tech stuff, the techie buried him in paperwork (like opposing council in lawsuits). Pretty soon the boss just said "You handle it".

Rich Grise wrote:

Widely used != Popular Sworn at != Sworn by

Bleating crowd. Computers crash a lot for him -- he recently switched at home from Windows to a Mac, and has been much happier.

Although he still managed to kill OS X within a handful of weeks after messing around with file permissions somehow. :-) He has nothing but praise for the Apple Store guys who got it working again.

Seems to me he's in jail for deciding to play politics at work... and losing. :-) I mean, I agree the charges (particularly the modem stuff) appear largely trumped up (by managers who got pissed off and are looking to punish the uy) -- and aren't going to hold up in court --, but if your boss stands there and tells you to hand over the network passwords, sure, you can certainly mention that doing so with strangers in the room is a massive security risk and is he really sure he stills wants to do this?, but if he says 'yes,' well, if you then still don't hand over the goods, I think it's pretty clear your job is over.

---Joel

...if that's what you want to call following standard security protocols.

The boss is going to come out looking like an incompetent weasal.

Not setting up escrow accounts in case your techie gets has a heart attack, or gets hit by a bus, or just decides that you're a jerk he doesn't want to work for any more is *your* fault, boss; don't try to put this on somebody else.

...and as a former employee, what obligation does he have to cooperate AFTER that? Again, the boss sounds like he should have a job that involves asking "Do you want fries with that?".

Well, purposely not doing what your boss tells you to do, even if it is stupid, is definitely playing politics and liable to get one fired.

I mean, it's one thing to defer what your boss asks (if it is, e.g., a violation of "standard security protocols"), but you'd better scurry around and find some support somewhere higher up than your own boss if you're going to be insubordinate and actually need the job.

In all likelihood, yes.

But I doubt that will be much of a surprise to most. Few "bosses" really know, in detial, what it is their engineers, IT guys, etc. actually *do*.

None... unless it's spelled out in some other (e.g., pre-employment) agreement you signed, which is not that uncommon in IT these days.

I realize that (particularly now) not everyone has the option, but this sounds like another one of those situations where, if at all possible, Terry Childs' best move would have been to quit and find someplace that's run by more competent souls. Maximizing the chance of finding such a place would probably involve avoiding government-run agencies altogether...

---Joel