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From: bill@ssbn.UUCP (Bill Kennedy)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Student friendly assemblers
Message-ID: <295@ssbn.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 24-May-87 12:01:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssbn.295
Posted: Sun May 24 12:01:33 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 26-May-87 01:34:34 EDT
References: <1407@ihdev.ATT.COM> <167@elan.UUCP> <1670@tekcrl.TEK.COM>
Organization: W.L. Kennedy Jr. & Associates, Pipe Creek, TX
Lines: 26
Xref: mnetor comp.edu:408 comp.lang.misc:415

I have watched this discussion and just had to toss in my $.02.  In my
observation of some bona-fide computer wizards it was not necessarily
the particular language or dialect that was in use that made them fully
understand what the problem and its cause was/were, it was their saavy
of what the compiler would do with a particular piece of source code.
I said the "problem" because that's the only time you get to see bona-fide
wizards.  I have also worked with some of the brightest young "rookies"
that education has turned out and if they shared one ignorance it was
what the machine would do when given a particular piece of code.  I was
once accused (incorrectly) of being a wizard because I diagnosed an un-
resolved external reference (in FORTRAN) as a missing DIMENSION.  I did,
it was.  It comes of knowing what the compiler will write, e.g. in the
brain damaged Intel world, char vs unsigned char produce entirely different
results if the MSbit is significant.

The point--- You don't have to know assembler to program but you'd best know
the machine you're working with and assembler is as good a way to learn that
as any I know, short of writing your own compiler (and you'd best know the
assembler for that!).  It's far more important to know what "all machines do"
and then figure out how yours does "what they all do" and the idiosyncracies
of the one you're workihg with at the moment.  Everybody doesn't have to be
a cybernetic veterinarian but those who carry "computer professional" creden-
tials should have a working understanding of "what they all do".  Assembly
language programming (any assembler) is a good way to get that.
-- 
Bill Kennedy  {cbosgd | ihnp4!petro | sun!texsun!rrm}!ssbn!bill