Aaaagh, its so hard to choose. ARM/PIC/AVR/8051. I thought maybe I should approach it from the direction of the development environment.
What is the most feature rich development environment for microcontrollers on the market.
I'm looking for things such as debug features, auto code generation, 21st century code editor, simulations, etc.
I recommend that you consider reading 'Computer Design' magazine, another is Embedded Systems (they went fully InterNet this year, no more print, I haven't read a single issue since, too many ads), it used to be good magazine for micro developers. In any case, they host surveys to help guide folks with development choices. Its a thorny question you are asking, but it all basically distills down to, "what do you wanna do?"
YOU must understand what it is that YOU really desire in a tool. You want it to think for you? To write code for you? Or do you desire that the tools reduce the laborious aspects of the programming tasks? If its the first, well, maybe you shouldn't be programming; if the latter, well, checkout guys such as GreenHills or IAR. Greenhills is the more expensive, their JTAG debuggers/ICE tools typically cost (does not include environment...just the HW), around $5,000, then the environment is around another $5000 per seat. Its feature rich, but generally is processor specific. While the new Atmel AVR 'Studio 6' suite (doesn't run in WinXP SVCPK 3, sans all of the .NET updates, will not install), the suite is of course, Atmel controller centric, however it does employ much auto-code 'frame-works' and for all of their processors, which is nice, but ultimately, the programmer must know what it is that the framework generates. And...Atmel's ICE only costs $500 while their JTAG-ICE Mark II, is around $250, and both environments are free, while providing numerous features found in the $7,500 ~ $15k price development systems. But there is a distinct difference between the tools, its the matter of tech-support. In the old days, company's owned their SW bugs and helped their customers with those bugs for free, today, ya gotta pay for those work-arounds, or its tough-doodoo.
And then, hah hah hah, you nailed it. The text editors. My God, these commercial programmers are idiots. They boast these awesome environments and then stick in a note-pad for an editor, what're they smoking? Crack?
NotePad could be laughable if it weren't so bad. Millions of Dollars are wasted because of NotePad programming environment editors. It stinks that bad. There are other competent text-editors out there, but not many meet the efficiency of the WordStar keyboard strategy or the productive usefulness, and none, as far as I know, are integrated into a commercial programming environment tool-suite.
So if money isn't an issue, go with the big boys. But if you are new to microcontrollers, what do you wanna do? Math oriented tasks? Then Texas Instruments DSP oriented chips could be the deal. Microwave ovens/dish washers? Then 8 bit MicroChip PIC (or any of the dozens of other companies products, --ST, FreeScale, Renesys, etc) might be the ticket. But if you are interested in an in-between complexity programming such as doing XBee, WiFi, WebServers, AES/DES, DSL Modems, etc, then Atmel's AVR 8/16 bit XMega series processors are a good choice. And if wanna do something that's really resource intensive, then ARM chips are a good choice, 32bits and there are competent pay/and free tools available too. Then ya go out and find the tool-chain that suits your programming style.
Enough Yakin & Good Luck
bench knob
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