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From: jlo@elan.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.edu,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Student friendly assemblers
Message-ID: <167@elan.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-May-87 16:08:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: elan.167
Posted: Wed May 20 16:08:12 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 22-May-87 01:28:30 EDT
References: <1407@ihdev.ATT.COM>
Organization: Elan Computer Group, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 27
Xref: utgpu comp.unix.questions:2149 comp.edu:347 comp.lang.misc:399

in article <1407@ihdev.ATT.COM>, pdg@ihdev.ATT.COM (Joe Isuzu) says:
> Xref: elan comp.unix.questions:1931 comp.edu:261 comp.lang.misc:372
> 
> Here is the solution to your assembler user-friendlyness woes.
> 
> Get hold of a PDP/11 - a model with the toggle switches in front.
> Make the students do their first few programmes in machine language by
> entering them with the toggle swithes, one instruction at a time (of
> course there is no `editing' of the code, just replacement).
> 
> Then let them loose on an assembler, *any* assembler.  They'll be so
> happy to use it, they'll even settle for editing with 'ed'.
> 
> Okay, half a :-).

You may give it half a :-), but that is *EXACTLY* what was done in the
assembler class I took at UC Berkeley ~5 years ago. I think they were
still teaching it that way about 3 years ago. After doing two assignments
by flipping switches on a PDP 11/10 after standing in line for a while
to get a chance to use one of the four (usually only two were working)
machines, only to find out that the computer had died (literally, they
were old machines, no OS to reboot, just bad hardware) we were ecstatic
to get to use an assembler on a reliable machine.

					Jeff Lo
					ELAN Computer Group
					..!{ames,hplabs}!elan!jlo