Favorite microcontroller language?

C will always be my first love no matter what its a beautiful language and one I never get tired off but yet sometimes I really get stuck

Regards,

"I only mentioned it for anyone thinking of languages."

As far as I understand it (so far), it is a 'framework' and not a language. Python is the language whereas PYNQ is the framework providing all the drivers, API's, libraries to allow Python to play nicely with the Zynq hardware, resulting in the 'Python productivity for Zynq'.

As for microcontrollers, it perhaps gets a little more 'interesting' when you start to use the Jupyter Notebook 'magic's' within the PYNQ framework to additionally write code blocks in other languages such as C to run on the PicoBlaze/MicroBlaze soft processors implemented in the FPGA hardware... Xilinx after all refer to PicoBlaze as an 8-bit microcontroller core.

Agreed. I only mentioned it for anyone thinking of languages.

I'm not sure you can count Zynq as a microcontroller. It's s little bit more than just that! As far as I know the Python bit of Pynq isn't running directly on the ARM core - there's a Linux OS in between.

Pynq since the syntax is Python. Indentation is a must.

My oldest and probably most used over the years is MeLabs PicBasicPro.  I've been using that for well over a decade now.

What language I use is usually driven by the project and especially the people I need to work with. I'll use what they know  to speed up things.

For most things PIC I can get anything done in picbasicpro. I've even taken a project from mplab ide and rewrote it..... I think the real reason is so much code I've  already written is there waiting for me... Tons of reusable stuff and what seems like almost bulletproof Interrupt driven USB routines from Darrel Taylor.

I hate to admit it but I still use the old 16c5X OTP chips. The flash chips are great for development but when I'm done if I can cram it in a 12c509, 16c54 or 16c57 I will. I even have a few 16c711's left for simple USB stuff. My old Galep III still get used for these. I keep an XP machine around with a parallel port just for this. .....

I will use the arduino IDE for hacker stuff. Its great for playing around. I spend a lot of time tweaking the libraries though.  I guess that means my second favorite is C

I do have the MPLAB IDE loaded up and kept current for any official or "fancy" PIC stuff. And ATMEL Studio for the 328PB Xplained boards I'm playing with right now....

I use the term "microcontroller" to mean a single chip with a fairly weak CPU, a moderate amount of non-volatile memory (usually Flash or FRAM), and a small amount of RAM (usually SRAM).  Since the MCU has limited processing power and memory, it's important to use those resources efficiently.  Thus I prefer to program it in C, which is essentially a portable assembly language that uses high-level language notations.  C and ASM make it a lot easier to keep track of low-level resources and use them efficiently.  With a good compiler, C is usually as efficient as ASM these days so there's rarely a need to program in ASM.  Plus C source code is more compact than ASM and is (mostly) portable so you can use the same source code if you switch processors.

For me it's C !

C is an amazing, and possibly unique, engineering tool.

It manages to come closer to Einstein's "as simple as possible but not too simple" than pretty much anything.

You can use it to write a three line port toggle, or GIT (written AFAIK in C. not C++).

It gives you the close control you need in embedded micro-controller programming but has the power to do the hard stuff.

It's simple enough that the compilers actually work.

It's easy to learn.

I'm frequently struck by just how well it hangs together.

Of course it isn't the right tool for everything, you need VHDL for FPGAs and Visual Basic 6 for PCs.

MK

Hi!

I think for most people the beginner language might still be C with just a bit of C++ (i.e. just classes), since this is what the Arduino IDE and many example programs for Arduino use far as I can tell (I don't use Arduino much). Lots of people start with Arduino it seems.

Similarly, mbed provides this too. The newer programmers (learning with say micro:bit) have the option of Python, scratch etc., since that is supported in the online development environment for micro:bit and some other boards too.

For me, I like C with a bit of C++ for microcontrollers too. But it could change, since there is now massive amounts of resources on a microcontroller in comparison to a decade ago.

But when writing an application for an SBC (e.g. Pi, BBB) running Linux, then I think the time has gone to write everything in C or C++ these days, because other languages make you more productive. Speed could be a concern of course, and then there are some choices to be made, e.g. drop down to a lower-level language like C++, or choose a different processor/SBC or do some offload, all depending on the task-at-hand. Sometimes I'll write bits in C++, and write the rest in some other language (JavaScript for me usually, but I'm experimenting more and more with Python - still not my favourite language, but if it works and gets me results then I'm willing to spend time learning it). From my perspective that is the best of both worlds, speed&familiarity with C or C++, and speed of development for the non-time-sensitive parts of the application with JavaScript or Python.

A similar thing is possible with microcontrollers; script using (say) LUA, write the rest in C perhaps. I've not used LUA so far though, but I intend to sometime.

I have not discovered my favorite programming language yet, possibly because I haven't learned very many of the modern languages. (I've tried about 4 or 5 that were developed after 2000)

All of the above languages are ancient. and none of the above languages are in the top 3 most popular programming languages in the world today.

Some of the other popular languages would be:

Java, JavaScript, SQL, C#, Python, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Scala, node JS, Go, Rust, Kotlin, Swift, Elixir, R, VB.Net, Perl, Visual Basic, MATLAB, Scratch, Lua

I don't claim to be a programmer (although I've written many hundreds of programs)  and I do not aspire to write large programs that take months or years to develop, so simplicity and productivity are the keys for me in choosing a programming language. The development environment (IDE) is a big factor in productivity and can influence the choice of language.