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From: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.edu,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Teaching Assembler on VAX (BSD 4.3)
Message-ID: <201@drilex.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-May-87 09:11:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: drilex.201
Posted: Tue May 19 09:11:53 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 20-May-87 05:03:08 EDT
References: <351@aucs.UUCP> <588@maccs.UUCP> <234@brandx.rutgers.edu> <593@maccs.UUCP> <6725@mimsy.UUCP> <7743@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: dricej@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson)
Organization: Data Resources/McGraw-Hill, Lexington, MA
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Xref: mnetor comp.unix.questions:2411 comp.edu:394 comp.lang.misc:404

The original poster bemoaned the Unix assembler for teaching assembler.
Many followups said that it was fine for those few things one puts in
assembler, especially if you add m4.
Barry Shein, who posted the followup that this is a followup to, correctly
states that assemblers like ASMH have incredible capabilities, most of which
are supplanted in the Unix world by C.  He also goes on to question whether
it is necessary to teach about such assemblers.

The answer there is *yes*.  If I wanted a course in assembler, and got taught
'as', I would be somewhat lost if my job then required me to know the likes
of ASMH.  There are a number of capabilities that one expects from most 
assemblers; 'as' has relatively few of them.  (The local labels are nice,
I hadn't known about them.)

If your attitude is that you should only occasionally need assembler, and
it's mostly there for compilers to emit, I will counter by saying that if
you choose your architecture correctly, you never need assembler.  Don't
forget the B6700, et al, who have got along without an assembler since before
Ken Thompson ever found a PDP-7 sitting in the corner.  (Of course, they have
trouble implementing 'C'; it's too low-level a language.)


-- 
Craig Jackson
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