PIC Tutorial 1

Good Programming Techniques

Before we get to the nitty gritty of programming the PIC, I think now is a good time
to explain some good programming techniques.
If you type a ; (semicolon) anywhere in your program, the compiler will ignore
anything after it until the carriage return. This means we can add comments in our
program to remind us of what on earth we were doing in the first place. This is
good practice, even for the simplest programs. You may well fully understand how
your program works now, but in a few months time, you may be scratching your
head. So, use comments wherever you can there is no limit.
Secondly, you can assign names to constants via registers (more about these
later). It makes it far easier to read in English what you are writing to, or what the
value is, rather than trying to think of what all these numbers mean. So, use real
names, such as COUNT. Notice that we have put the name in capitals. This makes
it stand out, and also means that (by convention) it is a constant value.
Thirdly, put some kind of header on your programs by using the semi-colons. An
example is below:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Author :
;
; Date :
;
; Version:
;
; Title:
;
;
;
; Description:
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Notice that We have made a kind of box by using the semi-colons. This just makes
it look neat.
Finally, try and document the program on paper as well. You can either use flow
charts or algorithms or anything else you want. This will help you in writing your

program, step by step.

Right, thats the lecture over with, lets move on to the real stuff.