Re: [ubuntu-uk] Anyone here into low-level stuff?
James Grabham wrote:
> OK, so a couple of nights ago, someone from my LUG gave me a few old-ish
> books ('90s), anyway, theres a beginers guide to Assembly Language there. I
> started reading, and the first 3 chapters are just about Computer Science,
> and It's really interesting, Im learning about octal and hex, and other
> maths stuff as well. Id always though low-level stuff would be really
> boring... guess I was wrong.
>
Ah! front-panel switches and status lights, Iloaders in octal, PDP-8's
Then they started using bit slice 2900 series and you needed $8,000
worth of scope just to see the info on a single rail! I gave it all up
when they quit usisng 7400 series TTL only to have a small re-match in
the mid-80's with some 68k device drivers.
I remember well...fall back to sleep.
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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Anyone here into low-level stuff?
Agree with Matthew.
I've been coding for years now (most often in that piece of called
VBScript for ASP pages), but only just started a proper course, which goes all
the way from machine code to PIC to ARM to Pascal.
It's given me much more insight as to what I've been doing all this time.
XuanYou Tan
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Matthew Wild
Sent: Thu 4/17/2008 10:51 PM
To: British Ubuntu Talk
Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] Anyone here into low-level stuff?
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Andrew Oakley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> James Grabham wrote:
> > OK, so a couple of nights ago, someone from my LUG gave me a few old-ish
> > books ('90s), anyway, theres a beginers guide to Assembly Language
> > there. I started reading, and the first 3 chapters are just about
> > Computer Science, and It's really interesting, Im learning about octal
> > and hex, and other maths stuff as well. Id always though low-level
> > stuff would be really boring... guess I was wrong.
Very wrong :)
>
> I officially retired from machine code when they switched from 8-bit to
> 16-bit. With 8-bit, I could actually memorise then entire 6502
> instruction set in my head, by the numbers (eg. 96 = return from
> subroutine). With 16-bit, it was just far too complicated for the whole
> thing to stick in my head in one go!
>
> Low-level stuff is really interesting, but the problem is these days
> everything is built library on top of another (eg. X-Windows, Gnome)
> that it is almost impossible to achieve anything in machine code.
>
Ah, but I believe just knowing it helps you in all areas of computing.
It gives you a feel for the basics, and leads to the guilty conscience
when using strcmp() in C :)
That said, assembly is still used often enough to optimise routines,
in games, or other performance-critical code, I don't believe there is
no longer a place for it.
Matthew.
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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Anyone here into low-level stuff?
gdgd, - I finally feel like a reel geek now XD
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:51 PM, Matthew Wild <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Andrew Oakley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> >
> > James Grabham wrote:
> > > OK, so a couple of nights ago, someone from my LUG gave me a few
> old-ish
> > > books ('90s), anyway, theres a beginers guide to Assembly Language
> > > there. I started reading, and the first 3 chapters are just about
> > > Computer Science, and It's really interesting, Im learning about
> octal
> > > and hex, and other maths stuff as well. Id always though low-level
> > > stuff would be really boring... guess I was wrong.
>
> Very wrong :)
>
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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Anyone here into low-level stuff?
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Andrew Oakley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> James Grabham wrote:
> > OK, so a couple of nights ago, someone from my LUG gave me a few old-ish
> > books ('90s), anyway, theres a beginers guide to Assembly Language
> > there. I started reading, and the first 3 chapters are just about
> > Computer Science, and It's really interesting, Im learning about octal
> > and hex, and other maths stuff as well. Id always though low-level
> > stuff would be really boring... guess I was wrong.
Very wrong :)
>
> I officially retired from machine code when they switched from 8-bit to
> 16-bit. With 8-bit, I could actually memorise then entire 6502
> instruction set in my head, by the numbers (eg. 96 = return from
> subroutine). With 16-bit, it was just far too complicated for the whole
> thing to stick in my head in one go!
>
> Low-level stuff is really interesting, but the problem is these days
> everything is built library on top of another (eg. X-Windows, Gnome)
> that it is almost impossible to achieve anything in machine code.
>
Ah, but I believe just knowing it helps you in all areas of computing.
It gives you a feel for the basics, and leads to the guilty conscience
when using strcmp() in C :)
That said, assembly is still used often enough to optimise routines,
in games, or other performance-critical code, I don't believe there is
no longer a place for it.
Matthew.
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Re: [ubuntu-uk] Anyone here into low-level stuff?
James Grabham wrote:
> OK, so a couple of nights ago, someone from my LUG gave me a few old-ish
> books ('90s), anyway, theres a beginers guide to Assembly Language
> there. I started reading, and the first 3 chapters are just about
> Computer Science, and It's really interesting, Im learning about octal
> and hex, and other maths stuff as well. Id always though low-level
> stuff would be really boring... guess I was wrong.
I officially retired from machine code when they switched from 8-bit to
16-bit. With 8-bit, I could actually memorise then entire 6502
instruction set in my head, by the numbers (eg. 96 = return from
subroutine). With 16-bit, it was just far too complicated for the whole
thing to stick in my head in one go!
Low-level stuff is really interesting, but the problem is these days
everything is built library on top of another (eg. X-Windows, Gnome)
that it is almost impossible to achieve anything in machine code.
--
Andrew Oakley
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[ubuntu-uk] Anyone here into low-level stuff?
OK, so a couple of nights ago, someone from my LUG gave me a few old-ish
books ('90s), anyway, theres a beginers guide to Assembly Language there. I
started reading, and the first 3 chapters are just about Computer Science,
and It's really interesting, Im learning about octal and hex, and other
maths stuff as well. Id always though low-level stuff would be really
boring... guess I was wrong.
=]
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