Re: HLA v1.86 is now available


Spam Killer wrote:

It is of course *your* job to teach them about the call, push, and pop
instructions, *before* letting them write a subroutine!

Ah, but therein lies the "chicken and egg" problem. By the time you get
to the point you've taught them about call, push, pop, mul, div, etc.,
they've had to already have learned quite a bit of assembly. And to get
that far *without* numeric conversion routines is difficult.
Particularly when you're on a tight schedule as you typically are in a
10-week quarter course on assembly language.


And if they don't know which x86 instructions to use, they'd learn a
lot by searching in an instruction manual which instructions would be
suitable to write it.

That's great. It's also a waste of time. Why not give assignments that
cover the instructions you've just covered in class rather than forcing
students to try and find (and figure out how to use) all these new
instructions?

Keep in mind I'm not saying that they *couldn't* learn new instructions
this way, just that it's a far less efficient use of their time to
force them to work in this manner. Instructors that pull this kind of
stunt tend to get *very bad* reviews from their students.




I *do* suppose that students are given some learning-material, like an
instruction set reference!

When was the last time you took a programming class? Do you remember
the instruction giving you assignments that required material not yet
covered in the course? Do you remember what the other students in the
course had to say about such assignments? Sorry, this approach is
never popular and doesn't provide a good educational experience for
most people.

Again, there's generically nothing wrong with a numeric to string
conversion assigment, other than the fact that the students generally
need that code *long* before they are capable of writing it themselves.
And once they do reach the level of being able to write it themselves,
the need for it has passed (and then it just becomes "busy work" in
their minds). There's a little bit more to this educational process
than lay people such as yourself are aware of. But if you really feel
you know how it ought to be done, go sign up as an instructor at your
local college and have at it. I did that. It was quite a eye-opener.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

.

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