ZBasic used the same AVR chips and boards, but is easier to code.

http://www.zbasic.net/

And Parallax offers the Propeller for $7USD that is their own BasicStamp killer. It even supports color video, keyboard, and mouse.

http://www.parallax.com/Store/Microcontrollers/PropellerChips/tabid/142/ProductID/332/List/1/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName,ProductName

We will kill the expensive Basic Stamp® with the Ami18 Nano version.

This 24-pin and Basic Stamp® compatible module contains the newest XLP PIC18F25K22 (5-volt) PICmicro with 64 Mhz speed! The module is complete with a mini-A USB for programming and comes preburned with a bootloader.

The complete Basic Compiler (IDE) is Free for download !

Best regards,
PICshop

web http://www.picshop.nl
mail info@picshop.nl

“void” is a type, just like “BYTE” and “WORD” are variable types in PIC Basic. One of C’s improvements over Basic is that not only do variables have types, but functions (aka subroutines) can too by the value they return. In many cases, you don’t need your function to return a value, so you say that it has a “void” return value.

The particular typographical concern you have about curly braces are just the punctuation of C/C++. It’s very familiar anyone who’s dabbled in the predominate languages of the last 15 years: PHP, Java, JavaScript, ActionScript, Perl, PHP, C#, C/C++. Of the modern popular languages, only Python and Ruby lack curly braces to indicate clauses (and Ruby still uses them in many cases) In many ways, Arduino was written for those people with at least a passing familiarity with these languages (from say, writing their own web sites)

But you are correct, Basic is easier to use when just starting out. The problem is that it’s easy to hit the wall, both performance-wise and code complexity-wise, with Basic. Arduino tries to be as similar to Basic as possible without having that wall.

Try the Propeller Education Kit Labs: http://www.parallax.com/go/PEKit. PDF and code are free downloads, and also included in the free Propeller Tool Help system. There’s also a Spin tutorial built right into the Help.

A good book is “Programming & Customizing the Multicore Propeller Microcontroller: The Official Guide” which is available on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Customizing-Multicore-Propeller-Microcontroller/dp/0071664505

This is a good Q&A link about the Propeller:

http://www.parallax.com/portals/0/propellerqna/

I’d love to see some good “getting started” examples of how to use Propeller chips, if you know of any, please add some links in the comments.

Also, why would you compare the Basic Stamp? When a better comparison would be the Parallax Propeller Chip? The capability blows away the ATMEL chip the arduino uses and is only a $8 chip. Have you looked into that?

And the Arduino has gone from 8kB to 32kB of program space in that time period too, while the Basic Stamp 2 is still $49 and only 2kB of program space.

But you are correct in that my first comparison comparing the costs of the minimum components needed. For the Arduino side, you can get ATmega168s for $3.30 to make a minimal Arduino. Similarly, you can get the Basic Stamp 2 interpreter chip for $17, 2kB EEPROM for $1.10, and 20MHz resonator for $0.99 to create a minimal Basic Stamp 2 for $19.

And yes, the BoE-Bot is a great kit. I’ve used it and it’s a great way to get people started with microcontrollers, because robots are so cool. For anyone interested in robotics, definitely take a look at it, the book that comes with it covers a lot of good robot fundamentals

The $119 Basic Stamp kit gets you a Boe-Bot, and a getting started book. For anyone new to micros you can’t go wrong with a Boe-Bot kit.

If you want a basic stamp, they’re available as OEM for less than a dollar :)