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From: ken@rochester.ARPA (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.edu,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Teaching Assembler on VAX (BSD 4.3)
Message-ID: <27848@rochester.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 17-May-87 19:36:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocheste.27848
Posted: Sun May 17 19:36:48 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 17-May-87 22:45:38 EDT
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Reply-To: ken@rochester.UUCP (Ken Yap)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
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Xref: mnetor comp.unix.questions:2374 comp.edu:387 comp.lang.misc:398

Perhaps the poster referred to the quality of the error messages.  I
like the PDP-11 RT-11 assemblers best in this regard in the bad old
days.  One course I TA'ed used a cross assembler and a simulator for a
PDP-11 architecture. The students managed alright.

Frankly I think teaching more than a smattering of assembler is a
WOMBAT (waste of money, brains and time).  It should only be necessary
for that 1% of bit-twiddling that needs speed or needs to use a special
instruction.  Or to read generated code, if you write compilers.

Does anybody remember KT's (DMR's?) subtitle on the as manual in the V7
docs? "The ultimate dead language".

	Ken