Re: Learning embedded coding, which uC?

On Tue, 2 Aug 2005 08:56:32 +0100, Chris Hills <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>I have been in the industry 20 odd years and come across very few using
>Forth. I think it is not very common. You get the work because you are
>known and have a history.

Most of our customers want solutions rather than processes. In
the main they don't really care what the code is written in.
Just to pre-empt performance comments from people who last
used Forth 10 or more years ago, modern Forth compilers
generate native code of the same quality as commercial C
compilers.

When they do care, they appreciate low code size and speed
of development with Forth. In the rare cases when code has
been written in both C and Forth to the same specification
by programmers of similar ability using good compilers, the
Forth code has been about half the size of the C code in
terms of target memory usage.

I have no numerical data as to why Forth code should be
smaller than C code, but I suspect that it has to with
the low function call overhead in Forth promoting small
routines which in turn leads to higher code reuse.

At least for deep embedded systems, as to why development
is faster, there is just no substitute for interactive
bottom-up debugging on the target hardware. This contributes
to code development, to hardware bring-up, and to software
and hardware co-design.

Stephen

--
Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeltd.demon.co.uk - free VFX Forth downloads
.

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