Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ut-sally!husc6!harvard!ksr!alcatraz!benson
From: benson@alcatraz.ksr.com (Benson Margulies)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.edu,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Teaching Assembler on VAX (BSD 4.3)
Message-ID: <142@ksr.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-May-87 08:08:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ksr.142
Posted: Wed May 20 08:08:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 06:02:06 EDT
References: <351@aucs.UUCP> <588@maccs.UUCP> <234@brandx.rutgers.edu> <2242@castor.usc.edu> <1111@osiris.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@ksr.UUCP
Reply-To: benson@ksr.UUCP (Benson Margulies)
Organization: Kendall Square Research, Cambridge MA
Lines: 29
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.questions:2429 comp.edu:397 comp.lang.misc:407

In article <1111@osiris.UUCP> phil@osiris.UUCP (Philip Kos) writes:
>In article <27848@rochester.ARPA> ken@rochester.UUCP (Ken Yap) writes:

>I found a bug in an early version of Pyramid's optimizer by looking at
>the generated assembly-language compiler output.  I can't *program* in
>Pyramid assembly (they're pretty paranoid about keeping their instruction
>instruction set proprietary) but I can mostly read it, thanks to lots o'
>work with different machine instruction sets, and it was simple to find
>where the loop control variable initialization had been elided by the
>optimizer, right after that 20-way switch...
>
>Assembly language is not dead by any means.
>

Reading machine code is \not/ the same thing as programming in
assembler. Taking a course in a heavily macro-ified assembler only
obscures the kind of machine code produced by a compiler. 

Learn Architecture.

PS: Here is some garbage to force Pnews to accept this article. What
is the reason for "article contained more text than new text?"




Benson I. Margulies                         Kendall Square Research Corp.
harvard!ksr!benson			    All comments the responsibility
ksr!benson@harvard.harvard.edu		    of the author, if anyone.