On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
> How much time do you have?
not much! - 18 three hour lectures
> From my experience (not in teaching, but in
> sitting in several Assembly classes from college) that not many students
> "get" it. Perhaps part of that is due to the insturctor (in my case,
> spending almost a month covering DEBUG along with simple 8088 instructions)
> and perhaps part of that is the strangeness of the language (compared to
> higher level languages).
Use of the tools is a necessary step, but can easily overwhelm the rest of
the content.
> Just to make a single API call. DOS would be eaiser to program, but
> really, how much modern DOS development is being done nowadays?
You've hit on a fundamental issue to resolve - how much should
it be on creating real programs, and how much on mastering the
concepts and principles. But doing Windoze API calls would tie
up most of the course before they even get their own names on the screen.
> Interrupt
> handling is interesting, but again, how much time do you have?
Since we no longer have a course that covers the structure and
principles of the OS, file handling is primarily teaching
the basic principles of using an API, and what is involved
with dealing with an OS.
Interrupt handling goes a bit deeper in internal architecture,
and how the OS and BIOS communicate with the hardware.
> -spc (I might suggest writing code for a virtual VAX ... )
THAT would be fun.
But, back to the real world v theoretical, almost all of the
students want to start off with stuff that is directly runnable
on PC hardware.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Tue Jun 22 2004 - 01:39:22 BST