SemiOT: Mourning for Classic Computing

From: Master of all that Sucks <vance_at_ikickass.org>
Date: Wed Aug 15 15:48:43 2001

On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Paul Williams wrote:

> Horses for courses. The "low esteem" would probably be reserved for the
> few nutters who would like to construct large systems solely in assembly
> language, and then find that no one else can maintain them. However, as
> I work in the embedded real-time world, I mostly construct systems that
> are a hybrid of assembly and a high-level language.

I work in nonsequential (massively concurrent) robotics, and we write our
movement routines in assembler (basically the lowest level... servo
commands), and then do all the logic in Smalltalk, and all the interface
in VB (!).

> > I've always thought that one of the more simple assembly languages
> > would be a great 'first language' for someone wanting to learn how
> > to program. Who's with me?
>
> Strangely enough, the curriculum setters for "O" level Computer Studies
> back in the early 1980s. Before we moved onto BASIC, we were taught
> CESIL (Computer Education in Schools Instructional Language), which had
> statements like "JIZERO label" instead of "while" or "for"!
> Unfortunately our particular interpreter missed one of the advantages of
> assembly language -- it was written in BASIC and crawled along on our
> RML 380Z. If the monitor program of the 380Z had disassembled
> instructions, it would have been a much better tool and we all could
> have learned Z80. (That got relegated to my lunchtimes).

At the school I attended, we started with C, and *quickly* switched to
Modula-2. I have absolutely no clue why we didn't start with Modula-2.
It's a robust and beautiful language.


Peace... Sridhar
Received on Wed Aug 15 2001 - 15:48:43 BST