Assembly or ....

[Juergen Wagner]

In article <1793 at scolex> seanf at sco.COM (Sean Fagan) writes:
>In article <1961 at crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> orr at cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr) writes:
>>Do you think it is important to understand how transistors work as well?
>>The semantic level of most mircoprocessors is high enough that
>>learning a HLL is pretty much sufficient these days (compare 68000 asm
>>to C for example.)
>
>However, not all micros use a 68k.  Compare 8086 asm to C.  Or 88k asm to C.
>Or SPARC asm to C.  It is, IMHO, a good idea to learn assembly, or at least
>enough to understand the concepts.
>...

That's the point. My favourite programming language is LISP but nonetheless
it is important to know all the levels below that (C, Assembly language, 
Microcode, Nanocode, Transistors, ...), so you know what's going on.

It may seem to be sufficient to know a HLL (C, Modula, Ada), but as soon as
you are interested in portability and efficiency, you start doing some metering
and optimizing. It is important to know *WHY* that bit manipulation takes so
long on a 68000, and why it doesn't on a 68020. Knowing the architecture can
help understand what the compiler is doing, without having to code your
programs in assembly language. It also is important to know how the operating
system works, although I would not want to write one.

The "why" is more important than the "how".

-- 
Juergen Wagner		   			gandalf at csli.stanford.edu
						 wagner at arisia.xerox.com