On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 2:05 AM, Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote: > On 2014-11-05, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > >> "machine code" typically implies an instruction set specific >> to that machine... ALL computers operate in BINARY logic (a bit only >> holds 0 or 1). How you get those bits into the computer is >> irrelevant. > > Just to muddy the water... > > _Most_ parts of most computers operate in binary. Portions of some > parts (e.g. some NAND flash) use ternary, quaternary, or octal. IIRC, > four-state transistor cells are pretty common at the moment, but some > vendor(s) are working with 8-state cells.
Dragging this back to some semblance of reality: Whenever you write code, you're writing code for some kind of executor. No level of abstraction higher or lower truly matters; you just write to the level you're aiming at, and everything else is of educational curiosity only. I might write code for a Python executor one day, and for a C executor another, and then another day maybe I'm writing LaTeX code - that's a language, too, of a sort. If I build my own framework layer above the base executor, that's just added another type of executor to the pool, and now I can target that. Everything's abstractions around something, and *it doesn't matter*, because anyone can fiddle with any layer without disturbing the others. Those eight-state cells can be dropped in without breaking my Python code - that's the whole point of abstractions. They're doing their job. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list