I'd love to learn C but I'm a bit cautious as I'm told it is more like assembly. I just want to get the job done.
No, C is nothing like assembly. There are probably two main differences between basic (pic basic at least) and C. In basic all the variables are global, in C you decide which are local (to the functions you write) and which are global. In basic you have gosub's, in C you call functions that can (but don't have to) return values or have values passed to them. The advantage of this is that you can re use your code with out modification because any variable names in the code your reusing don't have to match the names used in your new project because only the values are passed back and forth. For example, you write a function to do an ADC conversion:
void int DoADC_Conversion(
char Chan,
char other_parameters);
{
put your code here
};
then, to perform the conversion you would write something like:
my_variable=DoADC_Conversion(Channel, any other parameters relating to the adc);
So, the above line of code:
1. Calls a function "DoADC_Conversion"
2. Passes "Channel" and "any other parameters relating to the adc" to the function
3. When the conversion is complete the result is returned and stored in "my_variable"
There are other advantages in using C, such as more compact code (because you write your own functions rather than using pre-rolled functions that need to cater to many possibilities) - though Pic Basic Pro is quite efficient and things called "pointers" which can access variables in memory more efficiently.
I am only scratching the surface ..... but
at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what language you use as long as you get a result that works, that your happy with.
OK..... are there any code tags we can use? to format code in posts?