My 3 cents suggestion to keep Positron afloat

[Yves]

The other day I was watching on YouTube some documentaries about the Pic microprocessor. What was interesting was mostly comments from those videos. Generally, I read a lot of dislike of Microchip Mplab over complicated and buggy software and coding. A lot of comments where saying they stick with Arduino for the sake of simplicity and the abondance of drivers. I don't blame them as one must be masochistic to write even a simple code like blinking a simple LED. In fact Arduino is a an expensive module and not really suitable for commercial fabrication. Coming back to code writing simplicity of writing simple to understand code the excellent Positron language is king it even allow you to write assembly for some requirements. Instead of spending lot of attention and time to get your code in C or other with Positron you easy to read instructions and don't even need to use Mplab to flash your code, then stand alone Pickit3 will do all that for you.
I couldn't fine on You Tube any presentations which could get a great impact on attracting new people particularly the newbie. I'm not too good at presentation and my strong French accent may be on the way maybe I will do it in French. There are multi nationals that are using Positron. Maybe we should get all our effort to keep Positron afloat and help Less to keep developing it and make some money from all his efforts. These days if you are not in the media, you are nobody beside the small circle around you, 
Regards,

Yves

[Stephen Moss]

I don't know if he is still working on adding support for the Amtel microcontrollers but if he is, or at least if not all of them just for those few used on the now ubiquitous Arduino then it could make Positron an attractive option to those Arduino users who do not like C.

That said, potential barriers to them switching are...

• Such people are used to the plug and play simplicity of programming via USB without the requirement to purchase a programmer, so it may be necessary to create a USB programming plugin that can be added to whichever IDE you are using for Positron to replicate that simplicity for them.
• They would also be used to having libraries which make using the various shields available easy to use via the addition of a few relative commands. Thus not having Positron equivalent libraries for the various shields ready to go could make it less attractive.

so it may be more work than any potential reward it is worth.

Interestingly I just performed a Google search for "PIC BASIC compiler" and Les's Positron website was the 14th item item returned and this forum was the 20th item so anyone searching for a BASIC programming language for PIC's should not have difficulty finding Positron, although how that translates into interest in Positron and potential sales is unclear thus it is difficult to what would be a good approach to take.

[RGV250]

Hi,
I just tried the search Stephen did as I was inquisitive. The first post is stupidly expensive in comparison and does not even do 24 series.
The second one is obsolete. The third one is Crownhill and so are several others so probably way ouit of date. The Farnell one is RF solutions which is so out of date it is not worth thinking about. Not shure about Oshonsoft.
The worrying thing here is that Google is supposed to be a search engine where in fact it just promotes products from who pays them the most.

Bob

[Frizie]

About 20 years ago I once wrote a 10-part course for Positron (then called Proton).
That was pre-YouTube time, so everything in text and examples 

The course was very popular on Dutch electronics forums AND Dutch school classes at the time, although the course itself was in Dutch.
Very regularly (still now, while the course itself is already very out-of-date and is also warned about this), I see newcomers here with code samples from my course that they have adapted to their own wishes (ergo, they came to Positron through the course), and that alone from the small country of the Netherlands.

I pointed out to Les a few years ago that a course on YouTube really helps a lot, but Les did not see himself as suitable for appearing in front of a camera.
But why should you have to be on camera?
I see excellent English courses on all kinds of things without a person in the picture 

However, my English is terrible, so making a YouTube course is not going to work for me.
The course must be in English and very low entry to attract beginners (see the Dutch course part 1 about ports and loops).
With Positron this is possible, as it is a very clear compiler language for microcontrollers 

See the very old PIC Basic course for beginners: www.picbasic.nl

Due to lack of time, the site is becoming increasingly out of date... 

[Dompie]

Yesssss, my very first steps with PIC chips were via Frizie's www.picbasic.nl. That was the beginning of the purchase of Proton and then on to Positron.
And it appears that it works, as examples of www.picbasic.nl are still regularly cited now on the largest electronics forum in the Netherlands.

Johan

Dutch: Nog steeds bedankt Frits!!!!!