My knowledge of how the processor works (by means of knowing assembly and OS development) is useful. Knowing how to write a program using only byte code is not (and I couldn't do it without many free hours and lots of reference manuals, and even then it would be a difficult task). Not to belittle your knowledge, but I'm just saying that being able to write a program using a hex-editor (and if you can, more power to you) is not very helpful in understanding how computers work; learning assembly and learning operating system design is where it is important, I would say.
On 4/9/2011 3:45 PM, Ken Perry wrote:
Yes and us true geeks used to dream hex in our sleep. I think there are still some of us left and I am no longer one, I know of all the possibilities and I can still code in ASM for burning chips but I no longer dream in op codes and registers, memory locations and IRQ's. All I was saying is learning of the existence and how it works is invaluable to a programmer even today. Are you telling me your knowledge of the subject is not useful? Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Coale Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2011 3:30 PM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind programmers I didn't say it was impossible (after all, how else would a compiler work?) I said that it was asinine and impractical. I say this because the x86 instruction set is amazingly complex. Sure someone could use a debugger to look around at machine code, that's not hard at all (in fact, I do it a lot with vc++ to debug things and get performance boosts). But, writing a binary file from scratch? I see it being possible, but you would need to know the encoding of every instruction you use. For example, "int imm8" is apparently 0xCD + the immediate byte, so to do int 80h, you'd have 0xCD80. That is fairly simple, but the "mov" instructions where you can have memory, immediate, and register operands are difficult, and then for each memory, immediate, and register operand you have an 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and for x64, 64-bit versions. It's no small feat to write a binary by hand.Laugh yes I have read them and there was a time I could write some verygoodstuff with nothing but a debugger. Just because it's nasty don't meanit'simpossible. I was not even in the same class of some of the guys I usedtohang out with. I knew one that won a programming contest who wrote a program to display a naked woman with nothing more than Assembler and atexteditor. As for machine language you can write it on your own if you know enough. Unfortunately time has dulled my memory of useless interrupts because we have so much easier ways to do things now. I think I could probably get a command line app to run with nothing but a hex editor but calling the GUI might be beyond me because you would have to do someseriousdigging to get that to work and sometimes the information is just not available anymore. Ken Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Coale Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2011 2:23 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind programmers What? Have you ever read the x86 information sheets? Teaching someone assembly is a good way to teach them how a computer works -- having them write programs in pure byte code (especially for x86) is both asinine and impractical. Maybe not so much for an extremely extremely simple virtual machine or basic processor, but complex instruction sets like x86 are flat-out beyond writing op-codes by hand. If you don't believe me, just take a poke at the NASM source code. ;) On 4/8/2011 6:47 PM, Ken Perry wrote:I am not quite as old as you but I come from the same time zone. I hadtolearn assembler to hack games on the Vic 20 and the commodore 64 and theTIbut more than that when I joined the Air Force and took on Electronics Assembler made my life easier. Then later in life after I lost my site I took software engineering and had to burn chips and while we could have wrote stuff in C it was much easier to control the registers and stuffwithASM. If we used C we allot of the time had to use special assembler keywords to get things to work quite right. If you look on the FruitBasketpage I was also insane enough to write the fruit basket in Assembler for windows xp and it runs in vista. I am not sure if that runs in Windows 7 but I should revisit it and make sure it does. Lost knowledge is not agoodthing. Assembler may not be a way I would write a project now days butifyou want to teach someone how your computers work there is only one thing better. The one thing better is straight opt codes using a debugger and watching what is going on. Well you could also write straight binaryfileslike a good Fortran coder but who does that any more. That what I shoulddois create the fruit basket with nothing but a hex editor. Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bill Cox Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 11:40 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind programmers On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Littlefield, Tyler<tyler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Assember? Really? You must be almost as old as me! I can't even find people who care about speed or memory usage anymore.I love assembler. It's a great way to teach people what's going on underthehood and make them think about what they do. Every time I see someone reserve a 100k buffer just because, I cringe. :)We must be from the same generation. I'm 47, and learned to program in machine code on an 8080 based Intel board with a hex keypad and some LEDs. It was a couple of years before I found out that people programmed using assemblers, rather than entering hex by hand. I worry that the new generation's early experience with computers is amazing games and technology so complex they could never realistically hope to understand it. What's the natural path now days for kids to go from playing computer games to writing them? On the old Apple IIs, you just typed list instead of run, and there was all the code. Bill __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind__________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind__________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind __________ View the list's information and change your settings at //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
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