Is Atmel Studio about to replace the Arduino IDE

[Roger Clark]

Hi Guys,

I've just watched this video by a guy from Atmel, at the SF Maker Faire

http://makezine.com/2015/05/17/talking-arduino-zero-atmel/

And he appears to be saying that the Arduino Zero programming enviroment will be Atmel Studio, as Atmel Studio will import Arduino Sketches

from about 1 min 15 onwards in the video

"The primary interface will be Atmel Studio" (01:38)  

Note. I know he is also talking about the in circuit debugging, but I get the overall impression that at least for the Zero, the current IDE will not be the main IDE

And given Atmel Studio works for AVR. Does this mean that it will become the "Primary" IDE for Arduino.?

[Massimo Banzi]

Hi

The arduino IDE is here to stay and has full support for the Zero.

I think what Bob was saying is that at the moment to make full use of the embedded debugger you need ATMEL studio

Debugging is coming to the 1.6.x IDE and later on to create.arduino.cc

M

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[Paul Stoffregen]

On 05/25/2015 04:30 AM, Massimo Banzi wrote:

The arduino IDE is here to stay and has full support for the Zero.

People dislike learning new software, even switching to similar programs.  But when they do expend the effort to switch, the new program becomes their familiar norm.  Rarely do they ever go back to the old.  It's much like physically moving one's living space... people resist going through all the trouble, but once they do, the last thing they wish to do is move yet again!

Saying the Arduino IDE is here to stay, but releasing hardware that will drive users to a different IDE for full support, well, frankly, sound overly confident to me.  I'm pretty sure Zero will cost Arduino a portion of its user base.  I'm sure Atmel will love to see users migrate from a hardware-independent environment to an Atmel-only platform under their full control.

Computer history is full of stories where a widely used platform, which seemed as if it would forever remain popular, eventually lost its dominant position in the marketplace.  In the 1980s, it seemed IBM would forever control the computer market, and then in the 90s and early 2000s, nothing seemed like it could ever loosen Microsoft's grip, until smart phones and tablets.  Only 10 years ago, Myspace seemed to define social networking.  These were all systems, like the Arduino IDE, where users invested significant time learning and they resisted switching to new and unfamiliar systems.... until new, compelling features or technology came along and gave people incentive to learn something new.

I realize this opinion probably isn't what you want to hear.  New product releases are always filled with optimism, sometimes to the point where dissenting views can seem like heresy.  I've considered simply deleting this message.  I hope this don't offend too badly, and I sincerely hope you'll consider the possible effect this move may have on the Arduino IDE's market share.  Once you drive users away to other software, almost nothing you do can ever bring them back!

[Alex Albino]

If Arduino supports the latest version of BOSSA (it's fast enough), there's no reason the Arduino Zero + Atmel IDE will pull any significant amount of users away from Arduino's user base.

I figure this by looking at the Arduino UNO's ATMega328p chip. If it's easy to hook up and program...people will love it.

The key to success here is to make things easy for makers. Folks love using the plethora of existing Arduino libraries, and building around Arduino supported chips.

Jus my 2 cents.

[Roger Clark]

This appears to be the thin end of the wedge.

Zero today, Due tomorrow, Uno in the near future

It could get to the point where new users just go straight to Atmel Studio for all Atmel based Arduino boards.

And existing users that want newer features will also be tempted to go across to a proprietary IDE

The only things the IDE has going for it, for new users, is lighter weight install, and simpler user interface.

But for anyone interested in alternative hardware development, e.g. ESP8266, STM32, Teensy etc, this doesn't bode well for the Open Source nature of Arduino.

BTW. The key driver for this appears to be the In Circuit debugging (which by implication the IDE will never fully support)

So from an Open Source standpoint, I've been chatting with the Eclipse Dev guys, and the Eclipse CDT, and standalone debugger, is spec'ed to be available on Windows at the end of June - currently the debugging side of things especially the standalone debugger is only available on Linux (and possibly OSX)

So personally for STM32, we're looking to integrate the Eclipse Standalone Debugger, as a debugging adjunct to the Arduino IDE.

Depending on how open the In Circuit debugging system is on the Zero, I can't see any reason why this method can't be used on the Zero; albeit Eclipse is a big install.

[Ray Bellantoni]

Roger,

 

Please make sure you listen to the entire presentation given at Maker Faire.  It was very clear, there is a distinct line that was presented, but I can see how you might read otherwise if you are only listening to segments of the presentation.

 

Bottom line is Arduino IDE is a good place to start and learn, it's not really developed for hugely sophisticated, experienced developers.  And to try to make it work for both would make it fail for both.  It would be too complicated for noobs, and insufficient for professional devs.  It sounds like your experience may be straddling the two ends, which is a difficult place to be, so you may need to resign to switching tools depending on specific project needs.

 

Ray

[William Westfield]

> Does this mean that [Atmel Studio] will become the "Primary" IDE for Arduino.?

Realistically, AS is already the “Primary IDE” for most the AVR and ARM chips used on most Arduinos.
I can’t see it ever becoming the primary IDE for Arduino users, though. Even hard-core non-arduino AVR programmers complain about the size, speed, and complexity of AS.

BillW

[james...@muvium.com]

The other day I installed Atmel Studio for some reason - seems they have gone the rebranded Visual Studio pathway - but it is HEAVY and took a long time to install with the various options to choose along the way - even I was scared!

Mind you Arduino is not exactly super light but I do agree that the Arduino IDE is for beginners and for that it seems to be one of these 'good enough' products

What you often see is a 'good enough' product gets you started ( often with a big dose of luck ) - but then the market expects you to iterate it into something world class which is where you earn your stripes!

I am not sure though that Arduino should just sit on their Hands and say 'it's good enough'.. 'it's good enough'.. 'it's good enough'..

Because if the market doesn't get what it wants ( whatever that is! ) it will simply flow around you

Part of the problem is that the business model of Arduino likely doesn't generate enough free cash flow to reinvest much back into the product.

And actually, since the Arduino Team didn't create the source code other than some glue code to join together existing source bases perhaps they probably don't have the expertise in any case.

As for preferring the Arduino IDE ?

I might be able to offer some insight as I am actually an alternate IDE vendor for Arduino.. sort of

My Virtual Breadboard product offers Virtual Arduino Hardware ( with a focus on beginners ) and in particular the VBB4Arduino 'Two Arduino's offers a choice to work with
Either
the Arduino IDE alongside and instruction set AVR simulator
OR
the integrated Java based development editor which features some basic things like tab completion and so on alongside an Arduino java emulation

I run a google app engine service to process part of the application which also gives me some useful metrics to drive product development

Here are some stats from the past 24 hours regarding preferences

http://www.virtualbreadboard.com/download/AppEngine.png

Well you can draw your own conclusions but I don't think Arduino should feel overconfident that people prefer the Arduino IDE when given a choice.

It also points to an idea that I have long thought - that it is the java side of Arduino that is what has made it popular with beginners and it is the C side of Arduino that draws in the experts

Personally I am betting on the Java side with a focus on enabling makers by lowering the expertise bar with smart tools for with my own development trajectory..

I would welcome a closer relationship with Arduino but I am trying to build a business and this means not everything can be open source at least in my view.

Food for thought.

James Caska
www.virtualbreadboard.com

-----Original Message-----
From: William Westfield [mailto:wes...@mac.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 7:19 AM
To: devel...@arduino.cc
Subject: Re: [Developers] Is Atmel Studio about to replace the Arduino IDE

[Massimo Banzi]

The Arduino IDE and Atmel Studio were created for different purposes and have different goals. The Arduino IDE is designed for beginners and tries to stay as simple as possible , you can get people started in a few minutes. I don’t need to go on about this , we all know this.
the fact that it is cross platform and open source has a lot of value too.. I had to buy a windows PC in order to run Atmel Studio because while running in a virtual machine not everything worked reliably (i.e. updating the firmware on a wifi module etc)

We have to be careful to identify the members of the mailing list with the wide array of Arduino users out there. We run a LOT of workshops and events and we observe people working on the IDE all the time. I can tell you that 90% of the people out there wouldn’t be able to get anything done on Atmel Studio, it’s way too complex and requires a lot upfront knowledge in order to be operated.


We have gone through a lot of improvements in the last few months that make the user experience super smooth, we have signed installers for most windows platforms, library manager, core manager etc etc

Next on the horizon is adding debugging to the IDE and ATMEL has offered to support this improvement, they clearly see how the two products work alongside each other and not in competition.

Lastly

James: this phrase "And actually, since the Arduino Team didn't create the source code other than some glue code to join together existing source bases perhaps they probably don't have the expertise in any case.” is unacceptable. We have written tons of code in the last 10 years. Next time before making such a statement at least take the time to check with github where you can see the amount of code we wrote on top of the excellent starting point that was processing.

Coming to this list to criticise the Arduino IDE just to plug your commercial , closed source product is , let’s say, not very transparent.

We’re open to discussion and we take all the criticism in the world as long as it is supported by a bit of research.

Good or Bad we take responsibility for our work and continue to improve the IDE even if we haven’t received a dollar of royalties for the last year and a half.. so treat us with a bit of respect.


m

--
Massimo Banzi
m.b...@arduino.cc

[james...@muvium.com]

Massimo, thank you for your feedback.

If you read my thoughts carefully you will see I am a friend of Arduino not simply here to 'plug my commercial closed source product'

If you read my thoughts carefully you will see I agree with you completely that the Atmel Studio is not appropriate for beginners and that the Arduino IDE is all about empowering beginners.

Of course I understand you have written plenty of code but I think you will have to agree you didn't write what I call core-technology ie compilers, editors, syntax processing, debuggers etc,

Your code base and focus has been to extend processing with macros, menu's, integrating bootloaders, creating libraries and installers

My comments are about core technology development relevant to progressing the IDE itself (this list) - not application development (the Arduino Forum)

There are more than enough criticism of the way the Arduino IDE has been managed to allow a little speculation regarding the reasons behind it and lack of internal expertise in core technologies due to inheriting these rather than creating I consider valid speculation.

> Good or Bad we take responsibility for our work and continue to improve the IDE even if we haven’t received a dollar of royalties for the last year and a half.. so treat us with a bit of respect.

Do you think I am here just to 'plug my commercial product?' - no - this is not a good place to plug my product anyhow. I monitor this list because Arduino is part of my own business and so what happens to Arduino is important to me and to many others. You may take responsibility for your own work but as an OpenSource project you also need to take responsibility for others that come to depend on your choices.

You are right about me having a commercial closed source product but wrong about my motivations, maybe we both need to do some research.

Trying to understand how Closed Source can live side by side with Open Source is a constant study for me and How Arduino Makes enough money to survive *in the long run* is of critical interest.

For example is Atmel Studio Open Source? Is the AVR VHDL/Verilog code Open Source? Clearly there are limits and I have long speculated that Arduino would run into trouble with the power of free - it's a double edged sword.

OpenSource is powerful buzzword because people associate it with FREE but FREE is not a business model. You know this and have concentrated your efforts on events, workshops and other ways to leverage your brand but what we are seeing is that the market perceives the progress in the core technology - The Arduino IDE - as being too slow and it's starting to flow around you. The split in Arduino itself, the multitude of forks for related embedded tools, the emergence of competing platforms - raspi, Edison, Netduino etc. All of this is starting to overwhelm and dilute the Arduino brand or rather commoditise the Arduino brand which is a valuable thing - just not for Arduino.

The BIG question for me - is who are you Massimo? Are you happy to have started a movement that then takes on a life of it's own or are you trying to build and lead a business that add's value to the lives of millions?

> even if we haven’t received a dollar of royalties for the last year

Do you think you can last forever without a royalty stream?

The BUZZWORD these days in the startup scene is : PIVOT

Are you willing to PIVOT?

Specifically,
- Are you willing to expand beyond your OpenSource limitations to be more inclusive?
- Are you willing to expand your concept of what Arduino is?

For example,
- What if you were to sell a closed source Virtual Breadboard 'Arduino' Edition (Windows/WindowsStore/Mac/iPAD/Android) through your channels => And receive a royalty
- What if we made a new Hardware board based on a closed source java compiler for a different chipset => And receive a royalty PER CHIP


You see I am here to collaborate in a way that creates mutual value but it's a challenge to find the right fit between open and closed source and much of that depends on your own personal ideology.

Mine is quite clear - I have been doing this since 1999 and while free grows faster, paid lasts longer.

Hope we can find a way to understand and perhaps even work together.

Regards,
James Caska
www.virtualbreadboard.com
www.waveraster.com/Main.aspx

[Tim Leek]

@James, if you install the Visual Micro plugin for Atmel Studio it takes away the complexity and provides much simpler Arduino compatible build facility. Provides full .ino compatibility, source code stays identical to the Arduino Ide (unless you want to break the rules then you can within certain boundaries). 

There will also shortly be an Atmel converter that will switch an Arduino project to a native Atmel project which will allow debugging. We also have an updated version of the Visual Micro usb debugger coming soon. The update will provide some new and never seen before debug features for all avr, sam, samd processors. Will work without the need to move away from .ino files and will not require cpu optimization to be disabled (as will any other solution).

@Massimo, congratulations on your purchase of a windows pc :) Did you get a really expensive one for proper comparison with your expensive Mac?

Tim

www.visualmicro.com

[james...@muvium.com]

@Tim – good to see your still making progress with VisualMicro – your debugging solutions are very interesting and since you’re the expert in visual studio debug framework I was not surprised to see you move into the Atmel studio plugin once they went Visual Studio pathway. I definitely think this is the step 2 for Arduino beginners to evolve to once they have cut their teeth. My main complaint with Atmel studio was the installation process itself which seemed very extensive (Gigabyte from memory) Visual Studio packages. For professional level it’s the right direction and I love Visual Studio myself of course since VirtualBreadboard is written in Visual Studio but I have to agree with the Arduino philosophy on this one – it’s too complicated for the first taste of programming especially for nonprogrammer maker types who seem to be the ones attracted into this. A tighter strategy involving a growth path into Atmel Studio from Arduino would make a lot of sense though to orientate those who don’t want to have their experience stop-out at the Arduino IDE level.

 

As for Mac - I am in the opposite situation! – I about to buy a Mac for the purpose of getting VBB to run on Mac (via Xamarin) and get VBB into the Mac/iPad via the Apple Store

 

I would like to see greater collaboration and communication between the community of related tool vendors as I think it’s in the best interests of the Arduino ecosystem in general.

 

Again these are opportunities just waiting at the fingertips of Arduino to engage with, same as contributors which was the earlier discussion.

 

Cheers,

James

www.virtualbreadboard.com

 

 

From: Tim Leek [mailto:tim...@hotmail.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 2:40 PM
To: devel...@arduino.cc
Subject: Re: [Developers] Is Atmel Studio about to replace the Arduino IDE

 

@James, if you install the Visual Micro plugin for Atmel Studio it takes away the complexity and provides much simpler Arduino compatible build facility. Provides full .ino compatibility, source code stays identical to the Arduino Ide (unless you want to break the rules then you can within certain boundaries). 

--

[james...@muvium.com]

Tim,

 

Nice to have Atmel come a knocking.. nearly had a similar scenario with Microchip.. but that’s another story.

 

I have also written debuggers – having written a wire-protocol proxy for my muvium java Micro solution – ie connect to Eclipse debugger framework to in-circuit debug the device over serial ( or microchip ICD hardware debugger ). Also I have a java debug framework inside VBB so it’s sort of the other side of the fence to the .NET debug framework so to speak.

 

I also didn’t get the Arduino IDE at first glance, but I did write a plugin for the Processing 2.0 at one point plus wrote a command line version from the Arduino source from early on ( which has now been replaced by Arduino IDE integrated command line since 1.6 ) from which I learned the state of Arduino source code base.

 

Given that processing code is essentially an Applet container viewer without any underlying concept of debugging it’s not really a suitable platform to host  debugging environment and hence.. it hasn’t been done since it’s hard to iterate in that way.

 

What I do agree on is that Arduino have done well to stick to the beginner message – the maker thing. This is where I am working harder to make my own tools smarter – think JARVIS design assistant! - still a ways to go but getting there J

 

We should for sure do some exchange (again). While my long term focus is java and makers - I have recently integrated an AVR instruction set simulator into VBB which would relatively easy to hook up with Visual Micro one way or another.

 

There might even be a case for a VBB Atmel plugin alongside Visual Micro in the Atmel IDE since VBB is Visual Studio ( C# ) and we could simulate either the serial connection or in-circuit debug hardware if that’s what you are up to there.

 

Definitely some interesting possibilities.

 

Cheers,

James

 

 

 

From: Tim Leek [mailto:t...@visualmicro.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 3:29 PM
To: devel...@arduino.cc
Subject: RE: [Developers] Is Atmel Studio about to replace the Arduino IDE

 

Hi James,

 

I agree. For new coders and people who do not know Arduino they need to first spend a few days/weeks understanding the rules and what Arduino is. Regardless of any other tool this is fundamental and I can't support users who have not done this. I find the Arduino Ide is the rock and yard stick by which the rest of us can know if we have done our jobs correctly or not.

 

It was Atmel that asked me to do the integration work and they seem to be a pro team. I am not unhappy with the 100k + downloads over the past year but 

 

I also have to say that there is little commonality between the original processing/wiring framework which the Ide was based on. It really has moved forward in huge leaps. When I first viewed the Arduino ide, as an experienced Ide user, I was not impressed. However since writing Visual Micro plugin I have learned how much effort and detail is involved in the ide and also how important the aspect of support is to any new feature. So I have come to have great respect for the Ide represents.

 

Your virtual bread board project is looking very good. Would be nice to see if we can hook up a jump into your system sometime.

 

Tim

[james...@muvium.com]

I too am flat out with my cross platform drive after which I will have a bunch of new toys and releases I have been holding back.

 

Drop me a note when you clear you workbench and we can discuss a Debug API and integration steps.

 

Cheers,

James

 

From: Tim Leek [mailto:t...@visualmicro.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 5:27 PM
To: devel...@arduino.cc
Subject: RE: [Developers] Is Atmel Studio about to replace the Arduino IDE

 

Hi James,

 

Yes would be great to jump from Atmel code to virtual breadboard!

Doing the Vs2015 work right now, but in a few weeks would be very cool.

Tim

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[Paul Stoffregen]

On 05/26/2015 01:12 AM, james...@muvium.com wrote:
> And actually, since the Arduino Team didn't create the source code other than some glue code to join together existing source bases perhaps they probably don't have the expertise in any case.

Wow James, you really know how to make new friends!

You talked of "core technology development" and "lack of internal

expertise in core technologies due to inheriting these rather than

creating" in a subsequent message. That's a particularly brazen thing
to say on Arduino's own mail list, when your website promotes your
commercial products using several copies of Arduino's trademark
"infinity" logo and teal color scheme.

[james...@muvium.com]

Paul, seems you have bought a gun to a thumb fight.

I am pretty sure that my inclusion of Arduino in VBB is a net positive to Arduino - I know loads of users have gone on to buy Arduino kits to use alongside VBB including Universities.

For VBB the Arduino is popular right now, before that it was the Basicstamp and the PICMICRO before that. I am adding the Raspberry Pi next and who knows what it will be after that.

My view is very uncomplicated - Arduino will need cashflow to thrive over the long run and PIVOTING to be inclusive of closed source tools like VBB and Visual Micro (sorry for speaking for you Tim) might play a part in that.. or not.. it's only an opportunity not a life or death thing.

I have to admit though that I never have a good argument to the 'commercial product' line of thought.. sorry yes, it's commercial - I wrote every line of code and enjoy making a living from it.

I do apologise if my observations have offended some of you though.

Cheers,
James

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Stoffregen [mailto:pa...@pjrc.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 8:24 PM
To: devel...@arduino.cc
Subject: Re: [Developers] Is Atmel Studio about to replace the Arduino IDE

[indigoredster]

Ok, this is enough of a ego pissing contest.

Just continue the good work and know that Arduino and Arduino IDE, ( et-al ) has with no doubt had a HUGE impact worldwide.

Arduino IDE has created a learning pathway for scores of neophytes into the embedded programming world in an
unsurpassed way, that was never really taught well or easily passed on in the past.

Getting into Embedded design used to be a hard-learned(earned) process evolving from PC-like programming to

learning to bypass barriers and dig down to bare-metal IO and hardware, then reducing footprint. Now it's like having
an automatic transmission that you can later shift if you want to with no limitations.

I wish it was around when I was hand wiring up 68000's, 8080's then Z80's in 1982.

Thank You All *** for historic contribution and for keeping Home built and professional electronics interesting and attainable and fresh.

Best Regards,

Lee Studley

Pro  EE/HW/SW/Mech Design

Now shut-up and Do ;-)

[Andrew Kroll]

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 4:07 PM, indigoredster <indigo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Now shut-up and Do ;-)

+1

--

Visit my github for awesome Arduino code @ https://github.com/xxxajk

[Britton Kerin]

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 11:48 AM, <james...@muvium.com> wrote:
> Paul, seems you have bought a gun to a thumb fight.
>
> I am pretty sure that my inclusion of Arduino in VBB is a net positive to Arduino - I know loads of users have gone on to buy Arduino kits to use alongside VBB including Universities.
>
> For VBB the Arduino is popular right now, before that it was the Basicstamp and the PICMICRO before that. I am adding the Raspberry Pi next and who knows what it will be after that.
>
> My view is very uncomplicated - Arduino will need cashflow to thrive over the long run and PIVOTING to be inclusive of closed source tools like VBB and Visual Micro (sorry for speaking for you Tim) might play a part in that.. or not.. it's only an opportunity not a life or death thing.

It sounds more like a distraction than an opportunity to me. I've never
heard of either of these tools and they don't sound useful to me now, and
I bet that goes for the great majority of Arduino users.

> I have to admit though that I never have a good argument to the 'commercial product' line of thought.. sorry yes, it's commercial - I wrote every line of code and enjoy making a living from it.
>
> I do apologise if my observations have offended some of you though.

They were *guaranteed* to offend. They were *designed* to offend. To pretend
not to know that is also pretty obnoxious. If you really want to apologize
you could retract your gratuitous and untrue insult regarding the competence
of the IDE developers, rather than leaving it classed as a neutral observation
as you do here.

Britton

[Paul Stoffregen]

On 05/27/2015 09:53 PM, Andrew Kroll wrote:

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 4:07 PM, indigoredster <indigo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Now shut-up and Do ;-)

+1

FWIW, in the "do" and not talking much dept, recently I've been working on a ground-up rewrite of the SD library for use on 32 bit ARM chips (and maybe AVR with larger RAM).  Source is on GitHub.  I believe this message may be the first mention of it outside of forum topics where people ran into limitations with the current SD library.

My redesign allows using SD from within interrupts and also the main program.  It features a thread-safe multiple sector cache & card access layer, to allow truly concurrent access, using SPI transactions as the locking mechanism.  So far, the main use case is playing multiple audio streams simultaneously while also managing the media.  I'm guessing it'll also be quite useful together with your awesome work with nested interrupt processing in the host shield library.  Eventually, in the more distant future, I'm imagining we'll migrate Ethernet and wifi to event-driven nested interrupt based processing rather than polling, and someday create an infrastructure of server-style libraries that run somewhat like unix daemons (for elusive "internet of things" applications), but allow for easy Arduino-style programming to share data with external services.... which will probably also require interrupt-safe media access.

The new code is currently working great for reading, allowing 4 simultaneous 44 kHz 16 bit audio streams without glitching playback, while the main program opens new files (directory parsing, etc).  Just yesterday I added the pathname processing code, and other stuff the day before.  So far, it'll all still read-only access, so I have plenty left in the "Do" area, so I guess I'll "shut-up" now.  But at least know I am indeed working on this and many other open source contributions that will enable many awesome capabilities as the Arduino world migrates from 8 to 32 bit microcontrollers.

[Tom Igoe]

Dear Paul,

a) thank you, that sounds exciting.

b) maybe we can start a new thread with this discussion? Any points you want to discuss, or is this just an initial update and you’ll get back when you have specifics you want people to react to. 

[Guenter]

hi,

sorry, I didnt read all but I was wondering i could offer an alternative IDE for beginners and more advanced users:

Watch https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1205100/9861855/57ce74ca-5b35-11e5-9662-6a781db86dbe.png in big, its all Javascript and I could technically add the debugger from c9 into there but i'd need some help of course. Does that would do any good or help (its os)? 

Indeed it feels a li little clumsy and I noticed I do often copy&paste fragments around instead of pulling standard blocks together. I know its plain C of course, and I can see where we are but I think it can be easily improved. Can anyone point me to the IDE code protocols anything, please :-)

greets,

g

 

[L. M.]

Over the last couple weeks I have been shaking IDE source code around. Turns out IMHO the codebase is not bad at all (contrary to some of the opinions I'd read about its being linked to wiring/processing). What's more, it's actually quite straightforward to move things around (little duplications) to come with some IMHO interesting enhancements. I tracked a number of these in other places (won't bore you with them now), and I just got the editor to the point where I took 1/2 day to add the .jpg/.md files support that Create will soon bring (documentation for the sketch and the layout of the circuit). 

Others have said more eloquently how IMHO the IDE is at a crossroads: stuck between the proprietary tools on one end, and its lack of advanced (does not mean complex) features to keep its original user base coming back. The changes I made were driven by the idea of keeping the original "It has to be simple" approach, without sacrificing power. At this point, I am also approaching a crossroads where it will become possible to push the IDE into other's territories: e.g. I should soon be able to create a sketch project based on Cosa entirely rather than xxxx (dunno what the lib is called.. Arduino?), or even support writing main file in LUA (for the ESPers out there). 

I would tremendously appreciate any form of feedback on these ideas, even to just say "who cares".

thank you for your patience in reading till this point

Regards

[Tom Igoe]

Sounds interesting. Got any screenshots or running code for people to look at?

Tom Igoe

[L. M.]

Hi Tom.  This is the master-list I'm working from. Still a few important things incomplete (particularly completion for C++ and ASM)