I think I am in love
Moderators: David Barker, Jerry Messina
I think I am in love
I have been looking for something like you for years. Refined and elegant . . a real stunner. I press your buttons and you do it for me every time. . . from an admirer . . Horace
The Honeymoon is over
When I first discovered Sfish It seemed perfect. I was extremely impressed with the way the supplied examples ran first time with minimal alterations. Sfish can produce truly portable code, something none of the other "high level language" compilers, I tried, were able to do very well.
I do like the program and hope to continue using it, but as I have been working with it for a few weeks I really just have to get a few things off my chest, if only to make me feel better.
If I can pick a few minor points from the novice's (me) point of view. The documentation style is a little terse, very technical and not that easy to read. Writing help for programming languages must be a hard thing to do, but other compilers help files do seem to be able to reach parts that the swordfish help cannot.
I can appreciate that the modules are written in the swordfish language rather than pre-complied, that is good. But with no way of stepping through the code you have to work your way backwards through the modules. They seem to me like Russian Dolls, each time you undo one there is another beneath it.
Ultimately there is no easy solution, I will have put in a fair bit of work if I am to make use of this application. I still have a lot of work to do . . . no thing as a free lunch an all that. . . all the best Horace
I do like the program and hope to continue using it, but as I have been working with it for a few weeks I really just have to get a few things off my chest, if only to make me feel better.
If I can pick a few minor points from the novice's (me) point of view. The documentation style is a little terse, very technical and not that easy to read. Writing help for programming languages must be a hard thing to do, but other compilers help files do seem to be able to reach parts that the swordfish help cannot.
I can appreciate that the modules are written in the swordfish language rather than pre-complied, that is good. But with no way of stepping through the code you have to work your way backwards through the modules. They seem to me like Russian Dolls, each time you undo one there is another beneath it.
Ultimately there is no easy solution, I will have put in a fair bit of work if I am to make use of this application. I still have a lot of work to do . . . no thing as a free lunch an all that. . . all the best Horace
I can agree with some of your statements. I needed a PIC compiler for a very large job and I was researching the pros/cons of a few others when I stumbled upon a random post in a forum that mentioned Swordfish. It seemed to be the answer to my prayers! I'm a Visual Basic developer and the code looked very familiar to me. I decided to buy it after playing with the free version for a few days. (Which wasn't an easy decision considering a very unfavorable exchange rate.) For the first time, my PIC programs just seems to 'work' the way they were supposed to. My other experience was with PicBasic Pro... talk about coding with one hand tied behind your back!
Now that I use SF everyday, a little of the shine has worn off. I still think I've made the correct decision in buying SF but its not the "super friendly compiler for absolute beginners" like I had originally hoped.
From reading this forum, I sometimes wonder if everyone else has a different SF manual than me. Some of the keywords and techniques that I see people throwing around, I can't find anywhere in the help files. I learn by example and reading other peoples code. With SF being relatively new, there isn't an extensive library of code out there for me to analyze. It's not like Visual Basic where I just type a few keywords into google and get pointed in the right direction immediately. This forum is about it! If it wasn't for this forum, I wouldn't have bought the compiler at all. But some of the replies in this forum leave me scratching my head. Its my assumption that the majority of SF users would be newbies and people who otherwise don't know C or ASM. I mean, really, it is BASIC for heaven sakes! That being said this forum is a bit intimidating. It seems like the solution to every problem involves ASM code and to tell the truth, if I knew that much about ASM I'm not sure I'd be using this compiler in the first place! Its kind of like handing your mother a logic analyzer to troubleshoot her Apple computer. Chances are that you got her an Apple because she isn't a tech whiz to being with. So she really isn't going to make much progress with the digital logic test equipment, now is she?
That being said, I really would like to thanks those who have contributed to this forum. If you want Swordfish to flourish, be nice to the newbies. This forum is one of SF's best assests. It's great having David answering questions along with everyone else.
I used to think that only swordfish 'coding gods' could uncover mistakes in the module libraries... so it was humbling to uncover an error in one for myself. That just goes to show you how some of these functions haven't been tried out on every PIC yet.
Anyway, I didn't want this to turn into a rambling post... I just needed to get a few things off of my chest too.
Now that I use SF everyday, a little of the shine has worn off. I still think I've made the correct decision in buying SF but its not the "super friendly compiler for absolute beginners" like I had originally hoped.
From reading this forum, I sometimes wonder if everyone else has a different SF manual than me. Some of the keywords and techniques that I see people throwing around, I can't find anywhere in the help files. I learn by example and reading other peoples code. With SF being relatively new, there isn't an extensive library of code out there for me to analyze. It's not like Visual Basic where I just type a few keywords into google and get pointed in the right direction immediately. This forum is about it! If it wasn't for this forum, I wouldn't have bought the compiler at all. But some of the replies in this forum leave me scratching my head. Its my assumption that the majority of SF users would be newbies and people who otherwise don't know C or ASM. I mean, really, it is BASIC for heaven sakes! That being said this forum is a bit intimidating. It seems like the solution to every problem involves ASM code and to tell the truth, if I knew that much about ASM I'm not sure I'd be using this compiler in the first place! Its kind of like handing your mother a logic analyzer to troubleshoot her Apple computer. Chances are that you got her an Apple because she isn't a tech whiz to being with. So she really isn't going to make much progress with the digital logic test equipment, now is she?
That being said, I really would like to thanks those who have contributed to this forum. If you want Swordfish to flourish, be nice to the newbies. This forum is one of SF's best assests. It's great having David answering questions along with everyone else.
I used to think that only swordfish 'coding gods' could uncover mistakes in the module libraries... so it was humbling to uncover an error in one for myself. That just goes to show you how some of these functions haven't been tried out on every PIC yet.
Anyway, I didn't want this to turn into a rambling post... I just needed to get a few things off of my chest too.
I too coded for a while in Pic Basic Pro until the lack of signed integers, float, procedures, etc, started to feel like swimming in treacle.Swordfish is a brilliant package at a sensible price. However, it needs more vigorous marketing for the developer to reap his just rewards - a search on Google for 'PIC Basic compilers' yields no direct hits on any of the first 3 pages!
useful comment
Thanks J.winters, found you comments helpful, firstly in that it is good to know you are not the only one. And secondly your comment about assembler. Most of my programming experience is based on a shaky knowledge of PIC assembler. One of the good things about Swordfish is the way you can use the names of the registers as they appear in the data sheets.
addition to last post
just wanted to add to the last post that PIC assembly served me well until I wanted to use the likes of SDcards and USB. . . that is it 