He wrote the assembler in C#. The assembler worked just like NASM. It looks up the instruction in an opcode table, given specific "flags" for special things. That is different from writing individual programs entirely in machine code using a hex-editor like you were saying. He is writing a program that does translations for him -- he never once has to write his own machine code together for a program he needs. Again, I said it is important for a processor designer to know his instruction set, but he should never once write a whole program raw in his machine code.
And please, I'm not saying that it is not good to know the x86 instruction set. I'm saying that >> writing an x86 program entirely in machine code using a hex-editor<< is an unnecessary skill. It's that simple. It's kind of like saying that being able to whistle is an important skill.
Anyways, since you said you're done, I guess that's it. On 4/9/2011 9:45 PM, Ken Perry wrote:
Yes and I suppose that assembler wrote the code in what? How did he know what to tell that assembler to write. Excuse me mister assembler please output my code into the binary format made for this particular chip which I designed. Sigh I said I wouldn't say anymore now I am done. Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Coale Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2011 12:22 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind programmers People need to understand though... I understand what you're saying, but even in hardware design, it is not important. Yes, the designer of a processor needs to know their own instruction set and how the instructions are encoded. However, and that's a huge however, they are not going to continually be writing test code by hand. A good friend of mine has been working on a processor design. Yes, he tested a few things out by feeding it raw bytes, however, he did not ever once write a full program for it using his machine language. In fact, instead of having to do that, he wrote his own assembler that would compile to his machine language, so that he was able to do something similar to: mov reg0, 100 add reg0, 50 and then test that. Point being, it is impractical to do what you are talking about in the real world and is therefore not important to be able to do. I hate for this to come out the wrong way, but maybe in the time you were working on hardware it was required, but today it is definitely not. Now don't get me wrong here.. it's an impressive skill to have if you can do it, and congratulations for being able to do it, but I'm just trying to get the point across to everyone else that it isn't an important skill that they need to develop. On 4/9/2011 9:10 PM, Ken Perry wrote:I think the problem is the meaning of important is different fordifferentpeople. For example. Knowing how the core of a bowling ball is important to a professional bowler while knowing that it has 3 holes and has to hit the pins is fine for people who bowl for recreation. I will yield in that it may not be important to some and probably not many but it all dependsonwhich place you are coming from. I am coming from a frame of mind that hardware design is just as important as coding and both have to meet inthemiddle. I don't just deal with Intel or AMD and sometimes the compilersarenot as good as those you might be dealing with. So I am finished withthisconversation mainly because it's getting out of hand. Besides in the immortal paraphrased words of two famous presidents. "let me be perfectly clear", " it all depends on the meaning of 'is'". Ken Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Coale Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2011 10:36 PM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind programmers How kind of you to join, master. Can you tell me who said that low-level was NOT important to know and understand? You admittedly stated that you ignored 65% of the messages, but then tell everyone to take Ken's side? Are you kidding me? You admit that you don't know what the argument (friendly argument) is about, yet you still pick a side? Come on now... Ken stated that --being able to write a program in pure machine code (no compiler or assembler)-- is important. I disagreed saying that it is not important. Knowing low-level concepts (like I pointed out earlier.. how the processor works, operating system design, etc.) is definitely important. Writing a program in pure machine code is an unnecessary skill, not an important one. On 4/9/2011 7:27 PM, Sina Bahram wrote:I haven't read 65% of the messages in this thread, frankly because theSNRis far too low.So can you guys please just listen to Ken on this one? low level is important to know and understand. End of conversation. Now go do something fun. It's Saturday night. Take care, Sina -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ken PerrySent: Saturday, April 09, 2011 8:06 PM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blindprogrammersI think we are just going to have to disagree on this. While I doubtanyoneis going to rush out and write a bit of Machine language I think it isstillimportant to know how. It's sort of like saying it's not important toknowthat there is a linker and what it does most people on this list willneverknow what the linker does because they deal mainly with High levellanguagesbut that doesn't mean the linker is not important. Most people willneverwrite machine language but when creating electronic circuits with smaller chips it is a useful tool. True you may never hand write it but increatinghardware it is very useful in reading it. I just found learning to writeitwas very useful back in the good old Hack hardware cartridges days. Sure the Intel book has both got bigger and more complex but I just saw a post where a guy wrote a hello world in Machine language just to prove itcouldbe done. Now I will point out he did it in Linux and he had to make hisownlinker of sorts well a shell linker all it did was write the file withthenumbers he wanted but I think he did that just so he could use a normal editor and he had to add the Aelf stuff on top but he did it in 120 bites which I find pretty impressive since 80 of the bites were AELF stuff. Anyway I am sure we are boring most of the people on this list. Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Coale Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2011 7:39 PM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind programmers Wait, you are adding new stuff in here. Yes, to me, it is important to know how to optimize code for either size or speed. It is also important to know how programs are executed and created (knowing the PE32 format, for example); however, knowing how to write a program by scratch by using a hex editor and writing pure byte code is not important. And, you are misinterpreting my reason for saying it is not important. I'm not saying it's not important because it is nasty studying. I'm saying it is not important because it is simply not practical and teaches you no more than studying assembly and operating systems (assuming you are actually learning). And I didn't say it wasn't useful, either. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is always good. But, I said it wasn't important. You seem to be mixing up the knowledge required to do something and the knowledge gained from doing said thing. In order to start editing a program using a hex editor, you have to already have the knowledge to do it (as in, you have to know that there is a data section, a symbolic table, etc.). You gain no new knowledge (aside from knowing how to edit executables) from editing, and/or writing, executables from within a hex-editor. On 4/9/2011 3:59 PM, Ken Perry wrote:Oh really? I found it very useful knowing how to minimize code and data sections by hand. It explains what compilers and linkers have to gothroughand ways to get around problems that exist. It even is nice knowing howexefiles are laid out. I agree that it's a nasty bit of study to get tothatpoint but I totally disagree that the knowledge is not useful. In factifyou ever want to get involved with the GNU compiler group believe meit'suseful. Ken -----Original Message----- From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christopher Coale Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2011 6:52 PM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school for blind programmers 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 therearestill 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 nolongerdream 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 thesubjectisnot 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 someverygoodstuff 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 Iusedtohang out with. I knew one that won a programming contest who wrote a program to display a naked woman with nothing more than Assembler andatexteditor. As for machine language you can write it on your own if youknowenough. 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 editorbutcalling 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 OfChristopherCoale Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2011 2:23 AM To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Searching for blind programmer to start a school forblindprogrammers What? Have you ever read the x86 information sheets? Teaching someone assembly is a good way to teach them how a computer works -- havingthemwrite 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. Ihadtolearn assembler to hack games on the Vic 20 and the commodore 64 andtheTIbut more than that when I joined the Air Force and took onElectronicsAssembler made my life easier. Then later in life after I lost mysiteItook software engineering and had to burn chips and while we couldhavewrote stuff in C it was much easier to control the registers andstuffwithASM. 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 Assemblerforwindows xp and it runs in vista. I am not sure if that runs inWindows7but I should revisit it and make sure it does. Lost knowledge is notagoodthing. Assembler may not be a way I would write a project now daysbutifyou want to teach someone how your computers work there is only onethingbetter. The one thing better is straight opt codes using a debuggerandwatching what is going on. Well you could also write straight binaryfileslike a good Fortran coder but who does that any more. That what Ishoulddois 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 forblindprogrammers 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 memoryusageanymore.I love assembler. It's a great way to teach people what's going onunderthehood and make them think about what they do. Every time I seesomeonereserve 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 neverrealisticallyhope to understand it. What's the natural path now days for kids to go from playing computer games to writing them? On the old AppleIIs,you just typed list instead of run, and there was all the code. 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