The last time I tried to learn PIC programming, I was frustrated by their developer support web site. There's a lot of detailed reference material for people who already know what they are doing and know what they are looking for. I didn't see anything like a tutorial for novices.

This time around Google helped me find a tutorial titled "Get Started With The PIC16F1 Enhanced MCU Architecture". Since the PIC on my evaluation board is the PIC16F18345 I thought that was a great place to start. When it came  up on my web browser, I looked on the navigation bar on the left and felt stupid. The tutorial is under the big bold "Tutorial" section on the global navigation bar. Why didn't I see that before?

[caption id="attachment_11128" align="aligncenter" width="502"]MicrochipDevTutorial A Getting Started tutorial under the "Tutorial" section of the global navigation bar.[/caption]

The answer? Because it was not there. If somebody just opens up the Microchip developer web site directly as I did before, without the URL taking me directly to a tutorial, the "Tutorial" section is absent from the navigation bar.

MicrochipDev

Most of the other sections are the same, but "Tutorial" is gone from below "Help" and instead there is "Store" above "Help". I guess Microchip is more eager to take my money than to teach me why I might want to give them money.

Why does Microchip mask the existence of the tutorials section? I don't know. I wish they hadn't, because I would have been able to get started on PIC programming much earlier.

Maybe they're ashamed of the quality of the tutorials? I hope not, because I'm about to dive in and I'd be sad if the tutorials sucked.