| ??? 01/27/11 19:05 Read: times |
#180850 - Who benefits? Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Per Westermark said:
I would expect a large percentage of consultants doing 8051 work professionally to have either Keil or IAR in their tool set. Maybe not the same version as used when a product was originally designed, but at least a recent license. Why??? For ARM development, I have used the expensive Keil compiler in situations where a customer may potentially have to buy a similar license. But we have then been talking about an important product for them, where I have considered the capabilities of the tool to be very important, significantly affecting delivery times or quality of their product.
The normal critique when talking Keil is normally not the price of their compilers, but the price they charge if you want some of their libraries (networking, RTOS, USB, CAN, ...) with full source. I don't see the benefit to my clients that's implied. If I thought it would benefit anyone other than KEIL or IAR, I'd recommend it. I prefer to do my work in ASM, which is how most of the follow-on work I've done was originated. Switching to HLL doesn't offer me much benefit, nor, by extension, would it offer them any. If they had to replace me, which a few may someday have to do, they'll be stuck with some "programmer" who, in general, doesn't know his *ss from a hot rock, and lacks the imagination to understand what's been done in the past, yet is too lazy to read the documenation, which, in most of these cases, is quite voluminous. The macros are documented, though in the original assembler's terms, and the code is thoroughly commented. That's more than I've EVER seen in HLL code. RE |
