The 880 will either know the discrete codes from it's internet download or you can teach them to it.

The 880 has an activity-based functional strategy. You can NOT program it as precisely as you can a Pronto, but in the long run you probably won't need to. During set-up it prompt you to tell it what devices you own. I think there are 15 devices allowed. You then set up activities and tell it which of those devices are used in each activity. It generally tries to use discrete codes wherever it can, but also tracks the state of ON/OFF and INPUTs for each device for devices that don't use discretes.

I highly recommend the 880, and own two. I'm a former Pronto user.