Re: Why I stop attacking HLA

randyhyde@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" wrote:
> Herbert Kleebauer wrote:

> The only problem is that you cannot give substantial assignments during
> the first couple of weeks because they don't know enough machine
> instructions to do this. Hence the use of HLL-like control structures
> during this time period.

Ok, let's get more concrete. Give us an example of an assignment which is
easier to solve in the first few weeks if you use HLL control structures.


> for example). You seem to think that students can absorb all this
> information at once. They cannot.

Even Beth couldn't write more than a few sentences to explain the flags.

There are 4 FlipFlops (a FlipFlop is a hardware circuit which can store
a single bit) which are set or reset by most of the ALU operations. For
the add/sub instructions the meaning is:

Z: set if the result is zero, cleared otherwise
N: set to the most significant bit of the result
C: set if there is an overflow for unsigned operands, cleared otherwise
V: set if there is an overflow for signed operands, cleared otherwise

Now show me, which of the above can't be understood within two
minutes by someone who was able to pass high school.



> > And if they know the flags, which "experience" do they need to
> > understand "jump if carry flag is not set"?
>
> It's a completely different programming paradigm for them. You're

Even if somebody knows nothing about programming at all, he understands the
sentence:

If the C FlipFlop is set continue with program execution at position
xyz, otherwise execute the next instruction.


> First
> you teach them about the flags. *Then* you teach them how the Jcc
> instructions operate. *Then* you teach them how to construct statements
> like IF/WHILE/SWITCH/etc using these statements. This process takes a
> couple weeks *after* they've already learned quite a bit of the
> instruction set already.

I always thought, 60 seconds are called a minute and not a week.


> Been there, done that. By the end of the quarter they've not gotten as
> far as when they've started with a high-level assembler. That's the
> bottom line.

Maybe that's the fault of the teacher and not of the students.
.

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