Sonsivri

hi
what compailer is profesional and beter.and why????
 picbasicpro or  mikrobasic
thanks for your guide

I think that it depends of what you are doing.
- Pic Basic Pro : is a very good compiler, very good generated asm code, very stable and bug free. If you want to create reliable programs it's the choice. The problem with it is that it's becoming old, no floating point support (without doing acrobaties), no procedural programming (only Gosubs and Gotos), and all the variables are globals ... for very long programs, it can become a night mare. The Ide (MicroCode studio provided by Mecanics) is one of the best dev environment for PIC.

- MikroBasic has a nice IDE, and is procedural. The fact that it's procedural makes it very suitable for writing reusable libraries witch can be very useful for companies working in electronics business. You can even sold libraries. It has all modern language constructs, and  suports Floating points manipulation. The problem is that the generated  code is somewhat ugly and not optimized. The big problem, I think, is that the compiler, at version 5.xx is still very buggy. The problem with MikroE is that, instead of doing only ONE compiler CORRECTLY, they try to do compilers for every mcu in every language. They also try to make Pascal and C and Basic compiler the same way. and I think that this is an error. I hope that they will try to stop creating more features and modifications on their compilers and to try to stabilise them, because stability and reliability is more important than multiplicity of features in industrial work. if they stabilise them, they may become some of the best tools on the market.

The big difference between MikroE and PicBasicPro is the fact that the fisrt is Procedural and the second Flat !!!
Flat programming suits very well code generation for PIC mcu's because of their architecture (I know what I'm saying because I'm a compiler writer). Procedural programming is very useful for structuring and reusing code, but the generated code is difficultly better that Flat one (C language is a special case because of it's special grammar).

The other difference is that of price, sincerely Pic Basic is not sufficient, you have to buy Pic basic Pro witch cost about 260 Euro. MikroElektronika offer MikroBasic for about 120 euro and I encourage every body to BUY instead of stole them, because this helps their companies to make them evolving.
Another choice of a good compiler is Proton basic sold also by Mecanics.
The three compilers support ICD either Microchip one or proprietary one, MikroBasic supports only MikroElektronika ICD proprietary one, witch is a very limiting beacuse you can not use it with MPLab (and then it's simulator).

Finally You have another choice, SWordfish basic compiler, witch works only on Pic 18Fxx series, but it's the best structure basic I have seen. http://www.sfcompiler.co.uk/swordfish/   


Best regards

Basic is easy, and you can take (PicBasic+MicroCode Studio) or MikroBasic from MikroElektronica. If you have about 120$ I think that the easies way is to buy the MikroElektronika EasyPic3 or EasyPic4. It has all peripherals intergartes and an on board Programmer. It has also a lot of goodies like 7 segments displays and Leds, Push Buttons, and a specially a Max232 with all its dedicates circuitery for RS232 communication with PC. This dev board will save you a lot of soldering/desoldering work, and let you concentrate on learning Basic language. MikroBasic has also a lot of examples and sample programs for this board. I think that the price is very low compared to what you get.
You can also use this board with Pic Basic and MicroCode studio witch can be interfaced with the Mikroelektronika PicFlash to let you program directly your pic on board. And if you use MicroCode studio, you can also compile yous PicBasic programs to use ICD witch is controlled via an RS232 line.

But be careful !!! Basic is easy on PC, it's considered as an easy langage because it hides all the complexities of PC peripheral and OS programming. On micro controllers, however, it hides SOME of the complexity (with cost of large code size), but it does not hide all the complexity, so some low level knowledge of the target microcontroller is still necessary (for example to set the clock speed, to access ports via dedicated registers, especially TRIS registers for indicating direction of pins ... and so on. So using Basic does not mean that your life will be very very easy in microcontrollers world. You still have to work hard.
Once you have acquired sufficient knowledge with one language on PIC you can switch to any other langage. If you use mikroBasic it will be very easy to switch to mikroPascal or mikroC because the only differenc is language, all the libraries are shared between the compilers produced by MikroE.

Best regards

PS. PicBasic+MicrocodeStudio can be downloaded for free from MeLabs web site http://www.melabs.com
MikroBasic can be downloaded for free from mikroElektronika web site http://www.mikroe.com
these are demo versions but they works FULLY, the only limitation is in code size of 2K, witch is very very sufficient for a begginer, I remember that I  learned PIC programming on PIC16C84 with only 1K of flash size, and I'm very amazed with the fact that most begginers (even on this forum) complain from the limitations of 2K. I think that limitation of code size is a good thing that let you learn to build optimised programs. When you will be sufficiently pro, I think that buying full version of the compiler (only 120 euro for MikroBasic) is not so expensive.

Best regards

hi in the same command complier with mikro basic and picbasic what have smaller file

it's the same file i think

you know between proton and picbasic it same

I would also add one thing that is very important for a beginner: Mikroelektronika has a forum where one can find a lot of help.
Pic Basic forum is almost useless.

Bye
Bepo

i the time that you spend to learn basic, you can learn assembler, is bug free, my opinion is that if you must debugger an high level language software, the error cause can be duoble , error in the software or error in the compiler, in the last case is very hard to find.
In assember you can contruct your subfunction and use it as "include" in other software, when you have make your basic subroutine (mathematical, serial, pwm, etc) also the assembler is easy and very short and transparent.
I have buyed original CSS, MikroC, PicBasicPro, but i have make more than 800 industrial application in pure assembler

Koky,
I agree with you for your considerations  about assembler, but also other things must be considered.
Much time ago I used assembler because it was my job. I am speaking about old micros, like Z80, 8085 and so on.
Now my job changed, I no longer write software, and I have to consider electronics only as an hobby.
Now I am using Mikroelektronika compilers, and returning to assembler is impossible.
I have two young children, a wife an so on..... I have only some time during the evening to dedicate to electronics.
My whole life wouldn't be enough to write in assembler all the libraries provided with these compilers.
Every tool has its own application, no rule is valid for everybody, in my opinion assembler is good for professionals, but for hobbysts I believe an high level language is more suitable.
Bye
Bepo

sorry its not the same

pic basic libraries are less but its instructions are easier to be understood
pic Mikro basic libraries are much more and much complicated an sophisticated but better for sophisticated designs especially those containing protocols 

i prefer picbasic though. Its good

For me.... MikroBasic es better for all the libraries. and the sintax is very similar to the original Basic language

I prefer picbasic. I first used mikrobasic but i think that picbasic is easier to use.
just my 2 cents

I prefer PicBasic, but I do not know well Microbasic

I think the Mikrobasic is easy to learn ....lots of library at hand, very good forum and the only minus I noticed is the compiled code size a little bigger.....but at the end of the day is the best!! 

I go for mikrobasic because of featured library and function, but it is easy to make program in PICBASIC.

it would be great if you'd get the procedural programming of mikrobasic with the simple instructions of picbasic.
for example say you want to test for an rpm signal presence on a pin. with picbasic you can use a single command, count, or interrupts.
with mikrobasic you'll have to code a lot to get the this working. also mikro is a bit buggy.

I have been testing SF and I must say I'm impressed. Not only can you write complex procedural code but you can write very flat Proton Pbro style.

It will even let you use labels

I'm sure if you placed every lib you have into one file and just included that every time you would not need to keep including a load of separate files.

Device = 18F452
Clock = 20

Include "everylib.bas"

Kind of defeats the point of the language but it works

I also see they now have a Fat32 Lib WoW

While I've not tryied PBPro yet, I have to agree Mikro is a bit buggy at times.

i prefer picbasic pro with MPLAB IDE, it's very easier to use

Hi,

it's a very interesting matter the choice between PicBasic or MikroBasic.

There's someone that can give manuals of the two languages so first to decide what's take I can see the differences ?

Thank you

I prefer PicBasic, but I do not know well mikrobasic.
Probably mikrobasic is more simple for people that work in informatic ambient as visual basic etc..-

Bye Bye
Marco

Mikrobasic

In MikroElektronica functions sin and cos do not work.

i choose Picbasic because it can work with ICD2   

PIC basic pro its very easy

Hi all,

In order to follow a learning path I suggest to proceed as follows:

1) Pic Simulator Ide from Oshonsoft: Plenty good Basic compiler and a great simulator. Generated code can be tested in the simulator or in any external development system. Nevertheless has poor documentation (though enough!!)

2) Once familiar with 1, move to Pic Basic Pro to take advantage of what you have learned before, as well as the new commands and features. Better documentation but not great.

3) Once familiar with 2, move to Proton. Even more powerfull compiler, more compact code (I guess) and similar quality of documentation as PBP.

After this process, moving to MikroE is no problem at all and it has by far the best documentation.

In all cases you have available very nice examples to learn by doing, altought you will have sometimes to make changes to adapt to your particular development system hardware.

regards.

My choice is MikroBasic