In fact, the last 3 years I write exclusively in C (with the occasional use of asm where appropriate). Simply, this is what pays the bills, so that's what I now do. It took longer to gain the same level of confidence than to what I was used when I migrated to asm for a new processor before; say half a year vs. two months. I was not new to C, having had used it on PC for years; nor new to the AVRs which are my main target now. So the dip is now over. I don't think I am more or less productive in C than in asm; save the fact that the main project on which I am working is huge, tens of kLOC, largely inadequate to asm (and also inadequate to 8-bitters, but there are reasons why this happened so).

And I also haven't used a '51 for the same time, except of some small hobby projects. As an example, a couple of weeks ago I gave in to the complaints my wife had for years on the timing of some external lights on our house which are controlled by a '51, and had to dug into what I wrote in '51 asm 5 years ago, and I admit that it was not THAT simple ;-)


I don't think so. One is certainly inclined to stick to a certain style of work, as there are costs involved in moving between styles of work. So, if you worked on a project calling for C for some reason, you will be more likely to do the next project in C even if it is slightly less adequate than asm, simply because you are already "started up" in C and don't want to move just for that one project.

Many years ago, you had been "set to" asm and the move to C was a barrier. I believe if we could compare your productivity in 199x using asm and in 200x using C, on the same medium-sized '51 project, we would see no significant difference.


Jan