Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsrgv.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!info-mac From: info-mac@utcsrgv.UUCP (info-mac) Newsgroups: ont.micro.mac Subject: Teaching assembly language programming, Mac style Message-ID: <4187@utcsrgv.UUCP> Date: Tue, 8-May-84 03:55:34 EDT Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.4187 Posted: Tue May 8 03:55:34 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 8-May-84 07:37:36 EDT Sender: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto Lines: 35 Date: 5 May 1984 01:20-EDT From: Tim McNerney Subject: Teaching assembly language programming, Mac style To: FISCHER@RUTGERS Cc: TIM@MIT-MC, info-mac@SUMEX-AIM In-Reply-To: Msg of 3 May 84 16:41:36 EDT from Ron While the two Mac arrangement will be indispensible to DEVELOPERS who want full control of the screen for their software products, for TEACHING purposes, the MacAssembler is probably not the right thing. When programming in assembly language it is so easy to screw oneself that for students first learning about how machines work inside, a constrained environment like MacPascal is much preferable. It looks like there is a need for a EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT here folks! How about a 68000 assembler and a very "careful" stepper/debugger that provides extensive error checking and displays the state of the registers and relevant segments of memory while the program is running? How about providing a "dial" that you can turn to slow your program down to a comfortable crawl if things are happening too quickly? Remember the days when computers had blinking lights, and you could tell what your program was doing just by gazing at the dancing patterns, or by sticking an FM radio next to the processor and listening to the buzzing and humming? Well, times haven't changed that much, we just have "bitmapped displays" instead of "front panels" and "sound generator chips" instead of transistor radios, that's all... Tim McNerney