CCS, HI-TechC, MikroC , MPLAB C.....Which C Compiler is the BEST???

[chenyi.com]

ccs very good

[preatorian]

Hi all,
That question sound to me like: "Which food is the best?" well, the common answear is ... depends on many things. If you are new in programming pics with C, I can advice you to start with CCS, then when you begin to find it "hard to deal with" move to microchip's compilers if you use 18F and above series, else move to HiTech.
Regards

[medik]

Well, I have the  privilege to have used some C compilers mikroC and CCS C are good for beginners like me. I find microchip C18 unattractive and think it's difficult to learn (because I hadn't looked into it). I prefer mikroC to CCS C for the ease of LCD implementation.

Which ever you use often will definitely be your best.   

[koky]

i have leave Mikroe vs Xc
i have buy original Mikroc and mikropro programmer
mikroprogrammer give always a lot of error
in the last is impossible to program 12F1840.
I have try program it with realice of mikrochip and go as a dream
Xc is little more complicated, but is the best investment

[TucoRamirez]

mikroC to me is not giving me troubles yet, maybe some built in libs using more space than expected, but, it's my fault to be lazy sometimes...  i don't have the mikroprogrammer , i have my cheapo pickit3 clone and is working good , so i use mois of the time mikroC,  anyway, XC is the standard goodie for my serious stuff,

[user77]

I think if you are totally newbie the best compromise is CCS it very similar to C ansi and for me has a good compiler.
This it was my experience...

[pickit2]

I don't believe we are still having pissing contests, the best is the one you can use or spend time learning.

[Vineyards]

I am a licensed user of MikroC and I can say as a compiler it is worth its salt. It comes with precompiled libraries which means you can't modify them or learn from them. You can just study the provided examples. This is of course  a serious limitation however that being said if you have the skill and knowledge you can always write your own libraries. IDE is a bit quirky, takes a long time to load, may behave differently from one OS to another. Once it is loaded however, it compiles code in a snap. It is not intended to be compatible with Proteus. On numerious occassions what worked in real hardware did not work in the simulator. It is especially so if software SPI etc is used.

CCS uses lots of macros to do hardware settings etc. I find that uninspiring. They say it is a good compiler but I haven't tried it extensively.
 

[Nicolina1988]

After reading this topic I am still not sure which one is the best and easy for beginners.
I am starting with CCS and it looks nice IDE, at least straight forward to install and run with !
Thank you.

[metal]

u'r still young :- )

try 'em all and decide for urself..

[jellybean442]

u'r still young :- )

try 'em all and decide for urself..

Most, if not all, compilers have time-limited and/or feature-limited trial versions available. Some compilers require an email or message to get a trial key, but that's not a big deal. It's worthwhile to get the trial versions and play around with them before committing to purchase.

You may want to avoid downloading and installing all trials at once, since it will take a bit of time to get to know each particular compiler; therefore, make a list of compilers that you're interested in just go down the list as you try them out. Some trials expire based on the date of download, whereas others may expire based on installation date.

Also, don't forget to visit the company forums for each particular compiler, since you can get an idea of what kinds of issues you may run into with that compiler, and you can also see how quickly the company responds to bug fixes and feature requests.

[CocaCola]

Also, don't forget to visit the company forums for each particular compiler, since you can get an idea of what kinds of issues you may run into with that compiler, and you can also see how quickly the company responds to bug fixes and feature requests.

In addition to bug, when you are a newbie if the compiler has a huge community driven forum you can garnish a TON of tricks, work arounds and basic source code to build upon...  While on the flip side if you are new and the compiler has no or a small user community you could be left learning mostly from trial, error or hoping their manuals are well written...

[jcddcjjcd]

I switched from MPLAB to MPLABX when it came out and found it a revelation. I work daily in Android Studio, Visual Studio and MPLABX and find them all excellent. MPLABX being NetBeans is right up there with the others.  I waited to try XC8 until recently and after getting my head around what was needed to convert my code from C18 I found it very good.
The strangest things can cause it to crash however it offers good warnings. The thing is to not try too much at once so you can have a better idea of where problems arise.
Compared to C18 it is as if you are woking in a higher level compiler, not like C# but it does take care of a lot of details for you.
For example the automatic placement of variable is great, no more rom const just const. Also not having to manage the linker is very nice, its all automatic.
Code reduction is quite a bit better, I converted 10 projects and all showed improvement.
Another bonus it the automatic saving of variable when going into and out of interrupts. All projects showed an improvement in the time to get in and out.
All in all I feel I have moved ahead in making the switch.
What I found the most strange was that missing a header file include is often enough to crash the compiler without warning. Also yesterday I wanted to check something so I had a while(1){NOP()} to stop things just after getting into main and that also crashed the compiler.
I first tried coding in the CCI mode but found the constraints were making conversion from C18 too difficult.

I can't say which is the best out of all the compilers mentioned so far but I can say that moving to XC8 is well worth it.
Regards,
John.

[Vineyards]

In my opinion the existence of multiple platforms to choose from is essentially good. One drawback however is having to master a new set of rules which should become obsolete in a matter of a few years. Presently, I code in MikroC and do the PC side in Visual Studio and C#. A friend of mine works with Delphi and works on the AVR platform. For any two users like us information exchange is minimal. Although we are doing similar things our worlds are alien to each other and we generally have no time to learn about from each other's experience. I already find Visual C# a sharp enough a deviation from my routine PIC coding experience.

I would prefer a microcontroller compiler to work as a module of one of the existing universal standard PC development environments. That is to say the IDE should ideally be the same. I also would like to remember the same rules for each environment. Presently there is no compiler doing that.



Posted on: September 30, 2014, 10:24:02 10:24 - Automerged
You may find me conservative but our world is a world of rules, methods and processes. Taking too much liberation is rarely good. That is why we still use those 8 bit processors sticking to the same topology as 30 years ago.

[jartur]

I think, CCS is better with MPLAB Plug-ins and PICKIT 3 is good for PIC12 PIC16 PIC18 with another family have some bugs

[Magnox]

I'm pretty sure this thread should be renamed to "I want to increase my post count"

(which I've just done myself I suppose...)

[pickit2]

pissing contest is first thought...

Posted on: November 18, 2014, 01:52:13 01:52 - Automerged
opps I said this in the past...

[TucoRamirez]

i never tried to "piss" with IAR-ewb for pic... any one of us did?

[Vineyards]

What is this: an Inquisition Court?

[fantomex]

For the longest time I've abandoned Hi-Tech C due to an old bug it had where the compiler had broken switch statements. It took me countless hours to find out that the compiled code was incorrect and I ragequit on H-T C. With microchip taking over and replacing C18 for XC8 I've started using the rebrand much to my satisfaction. I really like XC8 now, especially for PIC18 devices. My biggest problem with it now is indirect addressing on PIC16F.

Code:

*w++ = PORTA;

Compiles to only 22 instructions (in pro mode)!! On PIC18 it's just 5. Other than that I'm actually quite satisfied.

I've used CSS before but found it really dumb. Code like

Code:

#use rs232(baud=119200, bits=8, UART1, SYNC_SLAVE)

just feels like glorified BASIC. Then again, built-in niceties just like these helped supernoob me to get some stuff working at least.