
Microchip Unveils Online MPLAB IDE and $10 Board - szczys
http://hackaday.com/2016/02/15/microchip-unveils-online-mplab-ide-and-10-board/
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foldr
Is there any reason to use PIC instead of ARM at this point? You can get
similarly priced dev boards for Cortex M0 microcontrollers.

~~~
szczys
I always think you should start out learning 8-bit micros like PIC or AVR. The
datasheets are short enough you can conceivably read the whole thing. This
gets you some instinct on what peripherals a micro should have, how to look up
their functionality, how to troubleshoot when they don't work, etc.

There's a much higher bar for getting everything working on an ARM controller
(ie: did you turn on the peripheral clock before trying to drive that pin?).
But I agree, once you're initiated you should prototype everything on a 32-bit
micro and then port to smaller or more cost effective chips once all the
functionality is established.

~~~
foldr
That's a fair point. I started with AVR myself and I can imagine that I might
have gotten pretty frustrated if I'd tried to jump straight into ARM. As far
as cost-effectiveness is concerned, there are some _very_ cheap cortex M0
chips out there now (e.g.
[http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM3...](http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM32F030K6T6/?qs=%2fha2pyFadujR%2fWSfahMbfqNxy8AOR702lobnZPPAgDjioxyhIVrlUw%3d%3d),
[http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cypress-
Semiconductor/C...](http://www2.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cypress-
Semiconductor/CY8C4013SXI-400/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtOXy69nW9rM4zhsIgo0l9Hi%252bMw%252bJnLl%2fosN3n16WjTMw%3d%3d)).
At least in the case of the AVR chips, you have to go to the low-end ATTiny's
before there's any significant price advantage in bulk.

