It is certainly possible to make an 8-bit core based on RISC principles (ex: AVR), but the PIC wasn't. Classic PIC has a hard-earned reputation for awful compiler support.
Luckily the assembly language is one of the nicest in existence.
Turns out that PIC assembly is super fun.
Ah, this I totally agree with. Brought back memories from my undergrad days, programming with PIC was a joy compared to AVR in assembly.
Those parts didnt support stack variables, so that compiler would analyze the call tree and essentially use global (fixed address) variables for locals, but it could reuse them in different functions.
Yes a pain for the compiler, but at least one did it really well.
It’s the only one of Microchip’s compilers that’s not GCC-based, which can be a pain. Also I remember at -O0, the generated code is just huge and inefficient.
Did it? I didn't realize.
Though I did find at least one bug in the code generation for the compiler we were using ~15 years ago... Something funny was happening with the generation of an if statement, don't remember the rest of the details.
They struggled with C8 or something, then they purchased HiTech C and renamed it XC8 (and 16). Then I think expanded it to the DSP33s and PIC32 which for some reason are drastically different. Then at some point they forced everything into MPLABX (netbeans) and Harmony code generation… it’s never been good.
I hate that I’ve never found anything I completely love.
They have niches though.