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And actually, I think an advantage the PIC has is that, at least for the 16F
PICs, all the C compilers are truly horrid. When you are going to deploy a
microcontroller, any microcontroller, you really need to understand what is
happening at a pretty basic level. Once you have a lot of expertise in a
particular part, then a compiler can be a big productivity boost. But until
you have a lot of expertise, the compiler can really get in the way.
Fortunately for the PIC community, most of the compilers are bad enough that
you're not real tempted to use them.

That's the cool thing about AVR-GCC, though... you really *don't* need
to understand what is happening at a fundamental level. It just plain
works. I've used AVR-GCC chips in a half-dozen projects, some of them
*very* non-trivial, but I wouldn't know a line of AVR assembly if it bit
me.

It certainly doesn't hurt to master your platform's assembly language,
especially if you need every bit of performance the chip can deliver.
But as long as we're talking about hobby applications, I think most of
us can agree that life at the bench is too short to spend it learning
various proprietary assembly languages for no good reason.

Actually the AD9850 comes in a SOIC package with 20 pins/inch, or half
the spacing of a normal DIP IC, rather than a TSSOP (0.5 mm lead pitch,
or about 50 pins/inch).

I've never seen a 9850 in an SOIC. That certainly would be easier to use.
Where did you find such a thing? When I check AD's web site, all I see is a
choice whether I want my SSOP's on a reel or not.

Sorry; you're totally right -- it's not a SOIC, but an SSOP with 0.65 mm
pitch (39 pins/inch).

I've only used the AD9850 in one project, and I've never actually
ordered one -- I lifted mine off an old PC-VFO ISA card from 1998 or so.
Seemed to remember it being a SOIC, but the photos at archive.org show
that it definitely was not. There are other SOICs on the PC-VFO board,
and they have a coarser lead pitch than the DDS chip.

The AD9852/4 chips have the same 0.65 mm pin spacing for the record, but
a heck of a lot more pins.

-- jm

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