[TriEmbed] [TAR] New free Atmel Studio 7 development studio now lets you input Arduino sketches.

jonjwolfe at anibit.com jonjwolfe at anibit.com
Mon Oct 19 19:56:09 CDT 2015 

As someone who has been using Atmel's IDE's for quite a while, the 
ability to use Arduino code is not new, though it may be more seamless 
now than it has been in the past. Visual Micro has had a plug-in to 
allow native Arduino project handling within Microsoft's Visual Studio 
(and Atmel's IDE which is based on it since V5). I'm not going to debate 
whether or not Microsoft are big bad meanies, but quite simply, Visual 
Studio rocks and they give it away for free. They also give away the 
core "Shell" and SDK for it for free to where you could customize it to 
your own platform, compiler, and your own language. This is precisely 
what Atmel's IDE is. So it is technically closed-source, proprietary, 
but gratis, and they give you the tools to customize the hell out of it, 
that should count for something.

Speaking for myself as seasoned C/C++, I've always found the Arduino 
IDE's build system vexing, arbitrary, and severely limiting. You cannot 
control how the files are autommagically combined, and you cannot 
organize your files in to a typical project hierarchy with subfolders. 
Even with the new ability in Atmel Studio to directly build Arduino 
projects, you're better off in the long run converting to a C/C++ 
project.

It is not that difficult to "de-arduinoize" an existing arduino project 
while still using the Arduino libraries and platform, then you can have 
the best of both worlds, the Arduino libraries are quite convenient, 
once you learn its quirks and pitfalls, and you can use a real project 
organization with proper code separation. Up until very recently, you 
couldn't even have too many files in your project or the Arduino IDE 
would not be able to properly show them all in tabs. I did a 
presentation for Triembed a few years ago on Atmel Studio, I'd be happy 
to do another one, and focus on how to convert a Arduino project to a 
C++ project. They always say the "Arduino language" is based on C++, but 
it really *is* C++. You can use any C++ construct in an Arduino sketch, 
and you're subject to the same rules of C++. The only thing the Arduino 
framework/software platform gives you (besides the vexing file globbing 
pre-processor) is a bunch of macros that make things more convenient 
than using libavr's register definitions directly. You can still use all 
the macros in a "de-arduinoized" C++ project, so you literally loose 
nothing, except not having to be explicit about your code's 
inter-dependencies, which is a good thing.





On 2015-10-19 13:48, Carl Nobile via TriEmbed wrote:
> I agree with Rodney, in no way is the use of Linux small compared to
> windows in either the professional development and DIY communities. If
> you factor in the normal user and office workers then yes Linux has a
> very small footprint, but professional developers and hobbyists this
> is no longer the case. Just look at all the Raspberry Pis that have
> been sold in the last two or so years.
> 
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 3:10 PM, Rodney Radford ncgadgetry at gmail.com
> [trianglerobotics] <trianglerobotics at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
>> Fred,
>> 
>> I would agree with you that the money from Arduino is just a small
>> portion of what Atmel makes off it's products, but remember that
>> most future engineers start first as a hobbiest. That is why so
>> many companies give student discounts or freebies, to get them to
>> like their products before they turn into the engineers that
>> eventually make the products that will bring in the money.
>> 
>> As for Microsoft being the predominant OS, that is debatable now.
>> Take a look at the chart on this page
>> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems [1])
>> that shows that Windows is trailing Android, and Android is Linux
>> under the covers. While I suspect you were referring to desktop
>> interfaces, it was only a few years ago that we would not have
>> imagined that Linux would be so predominant in the handheld space -
>> give Linux time, it is still growing.
>> 
>> But even if the comment is true on the desktop, remember we are
>> looking at the segment of the market that is tinkering in
>> electronics - and that segment does lean more toward Linux than the
>> traditional segment.
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Fred Ebeling
>> <FEbeling at ecpdesigns.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I am always interested in others ideas on the “why and what
>> fors” that companies
>> do things. I would have to guess if I was in marketing that Arduino
>> products are
>> not a big percentage of ATMELs bottom line. They would more like to
>> have companies
>> that purchase 100K units a year, or a car company that purchases 10
>> million.
>> These companies are using the latest software, not the Arduino
>> environment.
>> 
>> As for the choice of Microsoft operating system. WAKE UP!! you
>> are in a very small
>> minority that doe not use it! (VERY SMALL)
>> 
>> Fred Ebeling
>> 
>> FROM: Rodney Radford via TriEmbed
>> SENT: Monday, October 19, 2015 2:44 PM
>> TO: Bill Farrow
>> CC: trianglerobotics ; TriEmbed Discussion
>> SUBJECT: Re: [TriEmbed] [TAR] New free Atmel Studio 7 development
>> studio now lets you input Arduino sketches.
>> 
>> I do agree this is a marketing ploy by Atmel, and they are a bit
>> late to the party. I was using Atmel products long before Arduino,
>> but I have not fired up the Atmel IDE in ages. I personally hate
>> the Arduino IDE, which is the only positive thing about Atmel
>> getting back in, but I have been happy with a simple text editor and
>> make files.
>> 
>> And yes, the MS Windows only is a bad decision for many of the
>> target audience they are hoping to hit.
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Bill Farrow <bill at arrowsreach.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> I don't think Atmel will succeed. They are trying to win back the
>> hobbiest and educational market that is exploding away from them out
>> of their control. The key concepts of Arduino was Open Source and
>> code simplicity. Bringing out a proprietary IDE and importing your
>> simple sketches into a more complex language and project format is
>> probably not going to excite to many people.
>> 
>> Plus, it is MS Windows only :-( So no one in my household is able to
>> use it.
>> 
>> Bill
>> 
>> -------------------------
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