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> The 8-bit PIC microcontrollers won the love of hobbyists for a number of good reasons. And I'd argue lost it with lack of open source compiler support. > Bu
by zokier 7y ago
> The 8-bit PIC microcontrollers won the love of hobbyists for a number of good reasons.
And I'd argue lost it with lack of open source compiler support.
> But that wasn't a problem if you moved up to the 16- and 32-bit processors
Microchip is selling XC licenses ($1500 and needs a dongle) for 16 bit PICs, because there is still no gcc/clang available. This in a universe where msp430, avr, and arm (and many others) all have good upstreamed gcc support. So I say it's still a problem.
32-bit PICs are just MIPS cores so they have at least some degree of support via that.
- analog31 7y agoIndeed, for me, I moved from 8- to 16-bit PIC mainly so I could write in C, even if I didn't always need more power. But the added cost was not an obstacle for my uses. Eventually the ability to use GCC moved me away from the platform altogether. And it wasn't like I had a problem with the Microsoft tools per se, but didn't want to invest my brain cells in something that was likely to be a dead end.