What’s wrong with 8051
————By Vinay Chaddha ,an Indian engineer
Let me begin with computers as I started with computers in 1979 and still use them. Also you bought computers and use them for study and few more things.
I started learning computers using 4 MHz clock speed and using CP/M operating systems with one floopy drive of 180 KB capacity and 4kb ram.
My first PC that I bougt in 1985 has 2 floopy drives of 180kb each, ram of 256 Kilo Byte (that is 1/4 of one MN) and 4.77 MHz speed (that is app 600 times slower than today's laptops) and used PCDOS 1.0
Here is the pic of the PC with my daughter learning alphabets on it.
So how many of you want to use this as your first PC in place of the laptop running Windows/7 that you have now. I am sure no one.
Now let us discuss micro controllers,
I started using 8031 and 8035 around 35 years back and slowly migrated to 8051 and then to ST 62T15 in 1990 and Motorola MC68HC705P9P in 1995.
Today I use ST Micro controllers STM8S series and STM32 series for most of new project.
However Indian students started with 8051 as that was latest when micro controllers were introduced in syllabus and syllabus has not been updated since then in some universities.
So 8051 is not the basic, Even 8035 that I learned 35 year was not basic but latest when I learned it.
Moral of the story - Every one learns latest products. Be it computers, mobiles or micro controllers.
There are only two exceptions.
1. In areas where there is a large installations of micro controller and products are still working, it is not cost effective to upgrade them as this needs lot of testing and any bug may cause problems. So users need to continue with old controllers. An example is lot of defense installations and medical instruments.
2. Indian colleges and universities where syllabus still recommends 8051.
Students get marks but find it difficult to get development jobs.
And you won't see many Indian design in market.
Who makes real money - Companies that design products and companies that make products.
Who pays money - the users. Indians.
So if you need only marks, There is nothing wrong with 8051,
However, If you wish to be a developer of embedded designs, start with some thing latest and current.
(so,I think 8051 is better for starting ,but not for development.——Alx Brain)