Assembly vs. Everything Else (was: SemiOT: Mourning for ClassicComputing)

From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_eskimo.com>
Date: Sat Aug 18 12:41:29 2001

On Sat, Aug 18, 2001 at 08:46:18AM -0700, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Aug 2001, Derek Peschel wrote:
> > > So that you may print "HELLO WORLD". It's essential for the newbie.
> >
> > _Really_ fancy assemblers can imitate a Turing machine at assembly time.
> > Then your program can contain whatever you want (list of prime numbers,
> > factorial, counterexample to Fermat's last theorem, etc.) and your code need
> > not do any calculation at all. The risk is that your program may take an
> > infinitely long time to assemble!
>
> That is a really fucked up thing to do to a beginner for their FIRST
> program. START with something so grossly trivial that they can do it with
> NO problems, and get a token success in their first attempt. THEN you can
> make them work in subsequent projects.

I never said that fancy macros were for beginners! I was just pointing out
the extreme case of what you can do with a good macro processor. The
beginners WILL probably want to use the PRINT macro, however.

Also, I mentioned languages with embedded assemblers, and that might be a
useful way to teach assembler -- by ignoring it at first and then using it
in small pieces.

-- Derek
Received on Sat Aug 18 2001 - 12:41:29 BST