Customer Reviews

Beginner's Guide To Embedded C Programming: Using The Pic Microcontroller And The Hitech Picc-Lite C Compiler

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

SUMMARY:
Friendly, personal approach to learning
Clear examples
Not professional
Bloated without purpose
Major content missing, even for a beginner
Way too expensive

EDIT:
The gushing five-star review by "Richard O. Scherlitz"... he provided the cover design for this book. I'd take his review with a grain of salt.

REVIEW:
I understood by looking at the title that I'd be in for some review material while reading, but that prospect did not bother me. By page 40, I was getting bored, but really eager to get into the meat of embedded PIC programming, so I skimmed ahead, passing several pages on topics I was quite familiar with. I skimmed even further, twenty more pages through almost text-less pages of screenshots on how to setup MPLAB. Some of these screenshots show nothing to select other than the "Next" button on the dialog box. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that the content never progresses, rather, the author simply elaborates on everything he's already discussed in the first part of the book. His examples are clear, but the subject ends way too quickly. No pointers or function pointers. No polling. No Interrupts. No service routines. We are talking so basic that I can't recommend it to anyone with any programming experience whatsoever - regardless of the language. These topics are dare-I-say, monumental in embedded programming and should, at the very least, be touched on.

This instructional book is written in first person. While not detracting from the technical capacity of chapters, it does bloat the content unnecessarily. I feel as if I've paid for the author's notes as he learned how to program a PIC microcontroller; a memoir on PIC programming, if you will. The reader will immediately feel less like a student, and more like a friend. At first, it's fun and new, but in some cases I feel like it's the almost-blind leading the blind. The intimidation of jumping into something new has left, but so has the book's professionalism and quality.

The fonts - Chuck, what happened? The code snippets go from Arial to Times New Roman to Courier - Serifs, no Serifs, italics and non-italics without purpose. Even font size and indentations are different from one example to the next. Again, I get the feeling that I'm looking at someone's notes, simply thrown together. Not only does this start to degrade the quality of the presentation, but it makes identifying examples of code difficult for the novice. All code should be presented in a fixed-width font (courier or the like) without exception, and indented if it pleases the author. At the very least, the novice requires consistency.

There are enough inconsistencies, programming vocabulary errors, grammatical errors, and spelling errors to cause me great frustration when considering the price tag. I did not see an editor listed.

The book has 200 pages. The last twenty pages are actually a copy and paste of header files included with the MPLAB and compiler suite. The index - I'm not sure anyone would believe me if I said it, but it is truly disastrous. There are index entries for "for-Loop" and "For-Loop". Worse yet is the index entry for the keyword "for". The entry is a numeric listing of every page in the book that uses the word "for". No, no, not just in programming context, but in actual preposition context. "For" example. "For" what it's worth. What is this index really good "for"? In other words, it lists almost every page of the book, comma separated, from 5 to 196. Other entries are similar, like the keyword "if".

You'll notice a common theme with the book, and that's bloat. First person bloat, font size bloat, screenshots that take up a full page but don't illustrate anything, copy and pasted header files in the appendix, the crazy index, and then the pages that are blank (nothing but a giant page number at the bottom). I guess the reader could put some additional content there.

Some of my points may sound petty; however, I'm reviewing a book, not a pamphlet. I'd say that Chuck had 50 pages of material, and wanted to sell a 200 page, $40 book.

If you have never programmed before, and you can get this book for $15 or less, I'd say you'd have a usable starter book. You will outgrow it before you finish it, but you won't feel like you've overpaid for the information.

This is the only review I have ever felt compelled to write.

I purchased this book, and "Programming 8-bit Microcontrollers in C" (Bates). Opening both books side by side, I can't believe I was duped by the five star reviews of this book. Granted, the author gives himself 5 stars in the CUSTOMER review section of each of his books. That should have been the first red flag.

I won't repeat what the others have said; I agree completely with the negative reviews. The quality of this book is atrocious. Pick up the "Programming 8-bit Microcontrollers in C" instead.

For those who want to start programming the PIC MCUs using the C language this is the right tool. Extremely simple and clear, the author teaches step by step how to use the Microchip's PICKIT2 with the PIC 16F690 and the freely downloadable HI-TECH PICC-LITE C Compiler (the version included in the CD that comes together with the PICKIT2 isn't working).
I did all the experiments and everything worked fine even though there are only few of them and the matter could have been treated more widely. Content rather poor for the price of the book.

This book is a beginner's guide to programming PIC microprocessors with the C language but falls short of explaining some of the topics that a beginner wants to know such as how to set up and run event based interrupts and interfacing I2C devices. These are the more complicated topics for beginner's.

For its $40 price I expected a higher quality book. The schematic diagrams and data sheet excerpts are poorly rendered, making them illegible. In Chapter 5 two pages are spent discouraging the use of the ++ increment operator because it makes code harder to read but the author never explains why he breaks his own rule throughout the book. Comments in many code examples refer to PORTB when operations are being performed with PORTC. Code examples are inconsistently formatted with arbitrary indentation, capitalization and comment structure. In my opinion a technical book for beginners should be accurate and clear; this one is not.

I have a fair amount of experience with basic and some assembly programming. I know virtually nothing about C, but wanted to learn it because of all that I have heard about how useful it is for pic programming. I bought this book after looking around the web and waited almost 2 weeks for it to be delivered. It is, without a doubt, THE WORST programming book that I have ever seen. It is an incredibly poor value for its cost, is very superficial, and contains virtually nothing about how C really works.
Prior to receiving the book, I downloaded a few old C tutorials from the web and started working through them. Although these tutorials were designed for C programming on desktops, they were far better than what this book offers. The Hi Tech compiler has an extensive manual and contains all of the information needed, although it is very complex. That said, a free C tutorial and the manual are all you need.

This book is so poorly written that it makes reading a chore. Many of the sentences are run-on and difficult to read. The first few chapters continually refer to information that will be presented later, leaving the reader an with incomplete picture of what is happening. The book is poorly indexed and poorly organized. In short, it is simply horrible.

I am terribly disappointed in this book. It fails to meet any of my expectations. the writing is so bad that it interferes with the minimal factual content present. I plan to sell the book and simply swallow the $ 30 dollar loss. To call this book abysmal would be to overly praise it.

I'm new to micro-controllers but have been programming in C/C++ for a very very long time. Unfortunately, I didn't understand that this book is not a beginner's guide to micro-controller programming. It's a beginner's guide to C programming where you learn to light up a couple of LEDs in the process.

There are so many things wrong with this book. It reads like the guy *just* leaned rudimentary C and then decided to write a book. The examples have numerous errors. The C programs are overly verbose with hard to read (and inconsistent) formatting. The idioms are just plain bad.

If you want to learn C *DO NOT* buy this book. I recommend buying a good book on programming C and then apply that knowledge to programming PICs.

In summary: if you're looking to learn MCU programming, STAY AWAY. If you want to learn C, STAY AWAY. I can't think of any reason to buy this book.

This book will NOT get you started in C Programming for PIC's. too many pages of info one should already know. NOT related to C. ex: installing software Cost of the book is entirely through the roof for what you get. Sorry Chuck.......but if you're gonna charge this kind of money add content

Before my review on this book I would like to explain the background how I decided to purchase this book.
As Hardware Engineer who had little experience in embedded programming and a basic knowledge in C language, I wanted to become more familiar with embedded programming using the C language.
One year ago I searched for low cost microcontroller evaluation kit and I found starter kit from Microchip called PICkit 2. I started searching the internet for reviews and I found there are two books with Embedded C programming title which using this kit. I decided to buy this book with its second part (Volume 2).
During the last year I have learned by myself the embedded C programming basics using the PICkit 2 and these two books.

Without entering the argument which I read in some other reviews, I do think that one must buy these two books together in order to become familiar with the embedded programming using C. It doesn't mean that these books have all the needed material but it is a must have to begin with.

Sorry for the long prelude but I think it is important to know the background in order to understand my review more clearly and why I gave this book 5 stars.

In my point of view the book is divided into 3 parts.
Part 1: sections 1 to 5 (pages 9 to 61)
Part 2; section 6 (pages 63 to 89)
Part 3: sections 7 to 15 (pages 91 to 178)
In the end there are general descriptions regarding Microchip PIC16F690 programming which is inside the PICkit 2 and the content of some header files.

The first part has a brief review and explanation regarding C language and its basic commands and structure. I think that this section is too short for anyone who needs to know the C language in details. In the other hand, the explanations are enough to understand the examples (projects) in the book.
In the second part there is an explanation regarding PICkit 2 hardware and Microchip MPLAB installation and setup.
The third part which I think is the best part in this book includes 8 projects demonstrating the C structure and commands by activating the PICkit 2 switch button (input), 4 LEDS (outputs)and a potentiometer (A/D).
One of the more important sections is the 6th project which explains how to link several files in one project.

In summary I got what I have expected from this book, but as I mentioned before this book is not enough and you need at least the second part (Volume 2) and of course the PICkit 2 hardware in order to complete the basic "Embedded C programming" course.
At first glance it seems that this all thing is not cheap and if you bring into account that you need to buy also the second book part and the PICkit 2 you'll end up with expense of ~$130.
This bundle is basic Embedded C course and I didn't found any other alternative at that time which can beat that price. This bundle also helped me to get familiar with embedded C programming.
This is the main reasons why I gave this bundle (and every part of it) 5 stars.

Sincerely,
Oron

I would not recommend this book to anyone. It is poorly writen. If I had not already had some experience in C programming I would have been totally lost. the author may know what he is doing but it appears to me that the book was never proof read.

Andy T.