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From: marv@ism780.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Student friendly assemblers
Message-ID: <687@ism780.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-May-87 18:19:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780.687
Posted: Tue May 26 18:19:04 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 29-May-87 01:14:43 EDT
References: <1407@ihdev.ATT.COM> <167@elan.UUCP> <1670@tekcrl.TEK.COM> <295@ssbn.UUCP>
Reply-To: marv@ISM780.UUCP (Marvin Rubenstein)
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica, CA
Lines: 23
Xref: utgpu comp.edu:365 comp.lang.misc:410

>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!).
>-- 
>Bill Kennedy  {cbosgd | ihnp4!petro | sun!texsun!rrm}!ssbn!bill

I must disagree.  I just finished implementing a Pascal compiler for an
IBM/370 and I don't know any assembly for that machine.  Furthermore, I don't
even know what half of the instructions of machine do.  The compiler does not
generate any of the supervisory mode instructions so I did not have to learn
them.

More to the point, I think there two concepts one is exposed to when learning
assembly language.  One of them is macro processing. The other is machine
architecture.  The macro processing concepts can be taught by using any
reasonable macro processor for examples.  M4 is certainly a reasonable macro
processor.  As for learning machine architecture, most assembly languages
tend to hide to some extent the architecture of the machine.  I feel that
machine architecture concepts are better taught with out reference to
assembly language.

    Marv Rubinstein -- Interactive Systems