[johndowe]

Hi there.

Have you ever programmed in assembler?

There is no more hazzard in debuging in ASM than any other language, if anything it is easyer because of the 1:1 relationship from the source code to the program file, and there are ML (machine language) Monitors that are used to debug the code, and even program in ASM, a good example is "DEBUG" which is a ML Monitor, which IS still avaliable in my version of win xp sp2 upgraded to sp3+ unfortunately there are no assemblers for win xp & P4's+.

I do not hate object programing, as i said it is great in web page design, but in more involved programing it does make things easyer but it makes the gap between the programer and the processor that much grater which is not a good thing.

When i was in colege a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, or so it seems, i took a course in the basic language on a DEC PDP11 with DECWriter (printing) terminals, i programmed a little game i called "x-wing.bas", it was based on the final battle in Star Wars where Luke and the others go to destroy the Death Star, first there you had to destroy 20 tie fighters and then the Death Star, i programmed it not for everybody to see the listing and immidiately see how the program worked, i programmed it for the computer to "underatand" the program, most would call it spaghetti code, but it worked well and it did fit in the 8k of memory we had avaliable at the time, if i would have programmed like my teacher tought me, i never would have been able to fot it in the memory that i had, my point is i understood how the computer worked and i used it to my advantage and i did something that i shouldn't have been able to do with what i had, i used my brain and i did not rely on the language to do the work for me, i did the work and it paid off, so much so that i gave copies to some of my freinds, and later i saw it and two modifications, one was with Human against the Cylons and the other was about cops and robers, but the listing confirmed that it was my logics they only changed the text, they even left the 1 bug that i hadn't corrected when i gave them the copy of the game, i felt flattered that programing students would find my work worth keeping and worth the effort of modifying the text, while keeping MY logic intact.

If you know how to program in assembler, you can program in any other language all you need to know is the instructions and the syntax of the language and you're good to go, but it is a one way thing, if you can program in basic or pascal, you'll have to learn how to program in assembler, your knoledge of the other languages will help a but but no where near as much as assembler will help for other languages.

It is a sad thing that they have stopped teaching assembler to new programming students it would give them a much better understanding of the computers they are programming, and make them better programmers.

Structure and stability:

Stability is VERY important, do you like it when your computer crashes? While you were working on your report that was due in only a few hours? I don't think so.

In assembler there is no pre-established structure, you program it as you want, if you program well, you will reward yourself with easy to debug code, if you don't well good luck with the debugging, and mantaining of the code for future updates.

Also, if you made a sub routine in asm which you use frequently in that program and then later in the program you would only need the end part of that sub routine, in asm you just jump to that part of the subroutine and that's it, you don't have to make major modifications to the program or the subroutine, it is that simple.

If you want a code example ask me & i will specify 8086 or 6502 code.

JohnDowe.