Even Older Man Yells At Whippersnappers

Christopher Reimer christopher_reimer at icloud.com
Tue Sep 19 14:15:03 EDT 2017


> On Sep 19, 2017, at 9:09 AM, justin walters <walters.justin01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 8:59 AM, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>>> On 2017-09-19, Rhodri James <rhodri at kynesim.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> On 19/09/17 16:00, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>>> D'Arcy Cain <darcy at VybeNetworks.com> writes:
>>>>> of course, I use calculators and computers but I still understand the
>>>>> theory behind what I am doing.
>>>> 
>>>>   I started out programming in BASIC. Today, I use Python,
>>>>   the BASIC of the 21st century. Python has no GOTO, but when
>>>>   it is executed, its for loop eventually is implemented using
>>>>   a GOTO-like jump instruction. Thanks to my learning of BASIC,
>>>>   /I/ can have this insight. Younger people, who never learned
>>>>   GOTO, may still be able to use Python, but they will not
>>>>   understand what is going on behind the curtains. Therefore, for
>>>>   a profound understanding of Python, everyone should learn BASIC
>>>>   first, just like I did!
>>> 
>>> Tsk.  You should have learned (a fake simplified) assembler first, then
>>> you'd have an appreciation of what your processor actually did.
>>> 
>>> :-)
>> 
>> Tsk, Tsk.  Before learning assembly, you should design an instruction
>> set and implement it in hardare.  Or at least run in in a VHDL
>> simulator.  [Actually, back in my undergrad days we used AHPL and
>> implemented something like a simplified PDP-11 ISA.]
>> 
>> Alternatively, you should design an instruction set and implement it
>> using microcode and AM2900 bit-slice processors.
>> 
>> --
>> Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Could I have a drug
>>                                  at               overdose?
>>                              gmail.com
>> 
>> --
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>> 
> 
> Even Assembly is easy nowadays:
> https://fresh.flatassembler.net/index.cgi?page=content/1_screenshots.txt
> -- 
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Is assembly still a thing today? 

I wanted to take assembly in college but I was the only student who showed up and the class got cancelled. I dabbled with 8-but assembly as a kid. I can't imagine what assembly is on a 64-bit processor.

Chris R. 


More information about the Python-list mailing list