Comments on: Samizdata quote of the day

By: Devil's Kitchen

Devil's Kitchen — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:28:35 +0000

I am currently developing a strategy to move all of our products over to Python…

By: jdm

jdm — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 23:07:12 +0000

Not in the good old days it wasn’t

Well, of course.

By: Laird

Laird — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:37:26 +0000

I suspect that explains a lot, Ian.

By: Ian B

Ian B — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 19:35:16 +0000

Just to be both hopelessly late as well as hopelessly pedantic, most of what was referenced here as “machine code” isn’t. It’s a second generation language called Assembly that has mnemonics and macros and all sorts of things to make programming easier than writing in actual machine language.

Not in the good old days it wasn’t. Machine code programming a ZX81: first take your notebook and pencil. Write your program in assembler mnemonics, one per line, in a column. Then, go down the program filling in the hexadecimal machine codes in a second column, working out relative jump offsets as you go. Next, use a simple hexloader program on the ZX81 to type the hexadecimal in. Save to cassette. Run program. Go back to notebook to try to figure out what made it crash instantly.

I’ve still got the notebooks from all those years ago. No assembler programs, just raw machine code. I had the hex for virtually the entire instruction set memorised back then.

By: jdm

jdm — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:41:39 +0000

Just to be both hopelessly late as well as hopelessly pedantic, most of what was referenced here as “machine code” isn’t. It’s a second generation language called Assembly that has mnemonics and macros and all sorts of things to make programming easier than writing in actual machine language.

In actual machine language, each instruction takes one clock cycle. An Assembly language instruction to load or store a value takes at least two cycles, set up the memory and then move the value. I know this (empirically only) because I had to help invent an assembly-like language for an 12-bit machine using 3 AMD-2900 Bit Slice processors stitched together. Machine had no official stack (but 32 registers, I think)… oh, sorry, us old folks (yes, I did the paper tape and front panel booting too) do carry on…

By: Michael Jennings

Michael Jennings — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:44:23 +0000

Real men use Lisp, of course

By: Giles Thomas

Giles Thomas — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:44:36 +0000

Your regular readers include at least one Python core dev. And a Numpy dev.

And a founder of a Python spreadsheet company.

By: Midwesterner

Midwesterner — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:35:19 +0000

Nothing was ever written in Cobol that couldn’t have been said in fewer words by James Michener.

By: Bod

Bod — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 03:07:49 +0000

Oh yes, IanB. I had an Ace 4000.

Learning FORTH was quite a change of pace after Algol-68, FORTRAN-44,-77 and BASIC.

I still have it somewhere, in a box, with Leo Brodie’s (hope I spelled that right) ‘Starting FORTH’.

By: jsallison

jsallison — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 02:56:51 +0000

COBOL rulez! C++ droolz! What are these other strange things of which y’all speak?

By: Bod

Bod — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 02:55:06 +0000

Holy crud. “Rodnay”?

I guess my excuse is it was a long time ago, and while I’ve met a fair number of Rodneys, (and a few Del-Boys too), I’ve never met a Rodnay.

‘scuse me while I fall on my sword.

By: Sam Duncan

Sam Duncan — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:33:18 +0000

You know I do, Ian. Never had one, mind you. Always wanted one, though. FORTH looked cool. I've been meaning to learn Python ever since I saw this, which took me right back to the 8-bit days of just typing stuff in and trying it out. I'm an ~~instant gratification~~ rapid feedback kind of a bloke (I hated photograpy before digital), and that looks right up my street. C does my head in.