At the risk of speaking out of turn, I think the problem (and this is speaking as a firmware engineer in my daily life) is that we're dealing with a real "potato" of a processor here. It really is closer to the old Commodore 64 in terms of its capabilities (faster, but not that much more memory or storage, if I'm getting the chip right). As Hans points out elsewhere in the thread, even Micropython is kind-of big for that environment.
Cross-compiling, in turn, is great for nerds who know how, but for people just learning and wanting to play around a bit with some scripting, it's a lot more work. It would raise the bar of entry.
I'd never defend BASIC in **general** terms compared to other, more modern interpreted languages, but in this environment, many of the advantages that made BASIC popular in the First Microcomputer Era of the 1980s also fit well here!
10 Michael WD0OM
20 GOTO 10
On Thu, Sep 12, 2024, at 20:02, Paul - AI7JR wrote:
I'll join in the fray, here:
I don't know what radio libraries exist for Basic (or
Python) at this time, but I'll point out that Python is currently a popular language where Basic is fading. It's also got a lot of
"modern" features (like local, rather than global variables!) and
there are more libraries available than you can shake a stick at.
You might also want to consider whether you really want an
interpreter in the radio--maybe it would be easier to use a
cross-compiler in the development environment, and load a binary
to the radio? That might let users pick the language they want to
work in, and connect to a language independent API in the radio.
I've been away from it all for a number of years, now, and I
don't really know what the state of affairs is at this time. So
take that into consideration as you consider my comments! ;-)
73, Paul -- AI7JR
On 9/12/24 10:27, Willem VA2WLM via
groups.io wrote:
Hans, I'm so curious about the planned scripting! Whatever
language you choose, it sounds like it would be awesome to have.
One thought: have you heard about MicroPython? It's a
lightweight Python implementation, specifically for
microcontrollers. I have no idea if it's even possible to use it
here, but could be interesting to look at.
--
Paul -- AI7JR
