Re: Intro to Programming w/ Machine Language

From: pH (high_at_cidity.level)
Date: 02/17/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 04:22:13 -0500

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 07:04:08 +0000 (UTC), Ian Woods <newspub2@NOSPAMwuggy.org>
wrote:

>On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 22:24:36 -0500
>pH <high@cidity.level> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 22:09:01 GMT, Robert Redelmeier <redelm@ev1.net.invalid>
>> wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> >I think learning ASM first gives a very solid foundation upon
>> >which to learn HLLs and other constructs. Especially with
>> >the prdominance of x86. Everything eventually gests reduced
>> >to machine code, and ASM is the closes human-readable form.
>> >
>> >OTOH, teaching transistor arrangements is probably unnecessary
>> >except to electrical engineers.
>>
>> But *do* note that no one mentioned transistors. I *was* actually going
>> to elaborate further and state that one would *not* have to delve into
>> transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc., but decided that "at the gate level"
>> should probably suffice, as that's one of the (cool) things about digital
>> electronics; you can design digital circuits from now 'till doom's day
>> and not know how to bias a transistor (and let's just assume, shall we,
>> that I'm not talking about operating at GHz speeds). Knowing how a NAND
>> gate's inputs affect its output... (has nothing to do with "teaching transistor
>> arrangements", whatever that is).
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>> http://www.jefftturner.com
>
>Personally, I think the diversion into logic gates is certainly educational but not
> really about computation per-se, just one very cheap method of doing it.

Actually, my point of view is one of... "understanding the roots of the
machine"... understanding and being comfortable with binary by starting
at the beginning.

Examining binary data at both ends of "a problem" is usually quite revealing,
in terms of "how the output (of a function) relates to the input", and I would
invite *any*one needing convincing to read (even) a couple chapters of
Hacker's Delight.

Jeff

http://www.jefftturner.com

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