| ??? 03/06/08 22:16 Read: times |
#151973 - Not always Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Jan Waclawek said:
... is more than just an another editor plus a simulator plus a downloader plus an emulator-interface (plus some esoteric C-centric "manager"), all this in modern windowey-clickey form (even with customisable "faces"). It can be, but not always. All I use in Keil, actually, is the editor and I hit "Project/Rebuild all Project Files" and I'm done. I don't even use anything else. I've tried to use the simulator on a few instances, but I find it too much work--I either use my own Pinnacle or just put printfs in the code. An IDE that had a decent editor, had a decent and easy-to-use simulator, and could make calls to SDCC would advance the 8051 community plenty. Not that it'd be perfect nor adequate for power users (though I'm a power user and it would be adequate for me), but we're not talking about power users here. We're talking about hobbyists that don't have thousands of dollars to spend; or professionals that are evaluating what microcontroller to use and don't have thousands of dollars to spend just to see if the microcontroller does what they need.* All they need is a working, easy-to-use IDE with 'C' compiler and access to devices that aren't back-ordered 18 weeks. * As a reseller of Keil, I've had more than a couple of people want a fully functional trial version of the software so they can see if it works and make a decision on what device to use. Unfortunately I'm not authorized to give out trial products and I have to refer them to Keil directly. I hope Keil lets them have fully functional software to try. If they don't, that person who is researching compilers/devices could easily find the right device, but if it costs thousands of dollars to try the development tools, they could very easily choose some other architecture. That's what I'm thinking of addressing here. If there's an easy-to-use IDE/compiler/simulator that lets these people work with the devices, that's all we need. Once they know it does what they need it to do they can always go spend thousands on a development system later if the free package doesn't do everything they need. Keil's demoware is fine for evaluating whether or not you like the Keil product. It's entirely useless in helping you decide whether MCS-51 is what you need because the code size limitation and the fact that it wants to locate the code somewhere other than 0x0000 means you can't usually do any real live testing. Regards, Craig Steiner |
