Hey all, I am a programmer that has been programming proffesionally for the iPhone, ( Objective-C with Cocoa Touch ), and I have been wanting to start a hobby in Microcontrollers lately, but I have no idea to start. I am on a mac, and have experience in the following languages.
C
C++
Objective-C
Java
Javascript
CSS
HTML
XHTML
I pick up languages fairly well, so based on that information is there some sort of kit/set up that you'd recommend for a noob? Thanks!

 

If you are familiar with C then it will be fairly easy for you to program microcontrollers (uCs) in in C. Two famous companies, which produce uCs, are Atmel (AVRs) and Microchip (PICs). They both have the proper software to program their uCs in C but I am not sure if it is compatible with a MAC PC.
Both companies have uCs with more or less the same performance and function but a reason which might make you choose AVRs is because you can find the software needed free online in contrast with PICs (you need to purchase it).

 

Check out Arduino ICE development board and system, AVR based that uses C/C++, open sourced (hardware and software) and avalible for Windows/Linux/Mac. Very inexpensive to get started.

http://www.arduino.cc/

There is also a PC application IDE using Java called Processing that can create portable PC applications that can communicate with an Arduino via serial port or USB serial.

http://processing.org/

Again all free and well supported with help forms and user contributed libraries.

 

For small uCs most programming is done in C and assembler.

The AVR chips are well supported on Linux, Mac and PC with gcc. The Arduino
tools consist of a java frontend for gcc and a software library. Very easy
to setup, easy to use and free.

(* jcl *)

 

Today I found an AVR development environment running on Mac OS X.
http://www.obdev.at/products/avrmacpack/index.html
AVR MacPack is similar to WinAVR for Windows. I'm not running Mac myself but a friend of mine was very glad when I pointed it out to him.

 

The hottest thing happening now is (are) FPGA's , Field Programmable Gate Arrays. They can be programmed with several languages, and there's a great demand now for FPGA programmers. Several development kits are available for FPGAs. They aren't cheap,,,but worth it.

eric