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Unread 17-03-2004, 08:41
seanwitte seanwitte is offline
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Re: C Programing language. Is it the devil?

There is nothing wrong with PBASIC, expecially with the latest release. The only thing missing from the language syntax that I missed was structs. The issue with the old controller has more to do with the architecture of the stamp. The stamp 2sx has 8 banks of 2kb program memory, but they all share the same 32 bytes of RAM. You can write a separate source file for each of the 8 program slots, but unless you declare the same variables in the same order in each file you can't share variable values between slots. Its sort of modular, but not really.

The big advantage to C is the fact that you can break your code up into logical blocks based on shared interfaces. When you write a complex program it is much easier to work with small, fully tested modules than one huge file. Once you define your interfaces you can code as many implementations of each as you want. It makes it much easier to write platform independent code that will run on either the mini or FRC controller. It also makes it easier to share code between teams because you're only adding files to the project instead of pasting code.

You'll eventually learn that for a good developer the language is largely irrelevent. Aside from the normal caveats in any language, value is added by knowing how to solve problems, not in knowing the syntax.