What is Easy C good for?

[artdutra04]

It seem to be quite useless =S

I'm sorry, but I have to completely disagree with that statement. EasyC PRO, just like MPLAB, is just a tool that helps you write code. And from my experiences, EasyC PRO just makes that process a lot more efficient.

Every season prior to the current season, we programmed our robot in MPLAB. We usually had a robot that worked, and we usually had some sort of a simple dead reckoning autonomous mode. It worked, but it was clearly quite time consuming to develop amazing code in MPLAB.

This fall, as a beta tester for EasyC PRO, I decided to take out some of the many sensors that our team never used on our FRC robot, like gyros and accelerometers and start programming them in EasyC PRO. Literally within hours, I had PID Control for the gyro perfected. I know for a fact that if I tried that in MPLAB it would have taken much longer!

The amazing thing I love in EasyC is the speed at which you can get code done. Deep down inside I'm not an uber-programmer geek. I'm not one of those people who incessantly insists that they develop 100% of their code in a text editor in Linux. I honestly don't care how the code is developed, all I care about is the end result. And if I spend 1 hour in EasyC PRO and accomplish twice as much, then you better bet that's what I going to use to program the robot!

Even the main programming mentor on our team - a college student pursuing a degree in computer science - has realized how useful and amazing EasyC PRO is, especially their built in color-syntax text editor. I gave him the PID control code I developed in the fall and already we have the basis for an amazing closed-loop feedback and control system for our robot's tele-operated and autonomous modes, at a degree light years ahead of the sophistication we could have achieved in MPLAB.

So in the end it's up to your team to decide. But just like the Mac vs. PC vs. Linux debate, choose your opinion only after you've extensively used each product. For everyone that does not like EasyC, open your mind and take EasyC PRO for a test run for at least a few days.