"Nobody teaches assembly language"

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Wed Jun 23 17:51:55 2004

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Tony Duell wrote:
> > > Well, you might actually be able to show them the same simple
> > > program for the IBM-1401, PDP-8, PDP-10, PDP-11, VAX, ... to
> > > get an idea of the different architectures. Something simple,
> > > like calculating a polynomial (VAX = 1 instruction,
> > > PDP-8=aaak! You expect me to type that in?).
> > Presumably for stage two you have them explain
> > why the POLYx instructions (which are in microcode
> > in the early VAXen) were subsetted out later on.
> And presumably stage 3 is to grab a VAX11/7xx printset, figure out the
> microinstruction word, then disassemble the appropriate bit of the
> microocde and understand how it works. Actually, I've never done this for
> VAX microcode, I did comment the entire HP98x0 calculator CPU micorocode
> source, though (256 locations of 28 bits each).

I think that we are getting more than a little past what I can
realistically teach beginners in one semester.

Ten or twenty years ago, we could add followup, more advanced
classes into the schedule. Now I'm in a [losing] fight for
survival, trying to keep programming classes alive. If they
ask me to teach Microsoft Weird again, I might not survive.
Received on Wed Jun 23 2004 - 17:51:55 BST