The Insider News
The Insider News is for breaking IT and Software development news. Post your news, your alerts and
your inside scoops. This is an IT news-only forum - all off-topic, non-news posts will be
removed. If you wish to ask a programming question please post it
here.
Get The Daily Insider direct to your mailbox every day. Subscribe
now!
|
|
 |
|
Terrence Dorsey wrote: How did you learn machine code?
[ranty...]
I remember my math teacher in 10th grade programming hex codes into a 4K machine. I actually learned BASIC first on a PDP/11, and HP calculators were a bit like machine code, by the time I finished high school I was writing assembly language in 6502 with opcodes, not machine codes, though I could tell you what most opcodes were in hex. Wrote a bunch of image processing algorithms in 8086 and 80286, but then finally compilers got good enough that I could write performance code in C and coerce the compiler to produce what I wanted with various "hints." Lots of fun - I must say, nowadays I'm actually feeling rather dulled to the whole programming environment, OOP has lost its allure, functional programming is cute but ultimately a niche and can be done well enough in OO languages, and things like Ruby and Ruby on Rails feel like klunky hacks - when it works it's cool, when it doesn't it's hours googling for someone on stackoverflow that spent even more time figuring out the solution and was kind enough to post it. Not to mention how klunky the supporting technologies like javascript, jQuery, css, html feel. It's rather depressing how pathetic the web development environment and technology stack kludge actually is, and more depressing is that we all seem to just accept it. How did we get into this situation? Machine code was elegant, capable, and processors and hardware was well spec'd. Nowadays I read about how pathetic or non-existent the documentation for technology "X" is (like ajax support in Rails) but nobody seems to give a damn. We've come a long way, but have we really?
And don't forget - all those fancy layers of DI, IoC, OOP, reflection, dynamic, LINQ, etc.......it all compiles down to machine code. 
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
People are always looking for the easy way to to hard things. Some tools do make the job easier others just make it easier to do badly or easier to do only if you're doing it exactly as the tool designer envisaged which you almost never are if you're doing something new.
Z80 machine code I could handle, it was human scale and the addressing modes were simple. Intel's mess on the other hand I'm still struggling with. Overall I always found really low level programming too slow, like a really stiff typewriter it could never keep up with my thought processes or I couldn't slow them down that much and remain creative. I too started with BASIC and that was cool until you ran out of RAM or you ran out of variable names you could remember to keep unique.
I moved directly to C++ without going via C really in order to get scoped variables. OO was just introduced another kind of scope which was great and namespaces gave me yet another scope dimension. I never really needed or wanted anything more than that.
I remain determined that the next time I return to Web development on my own account there will be C++ and the Web Server de jour and nothing else on the server side. Pure HTML from templates on the client side and anything and everything else will be autogenerated. I'm stubborn like that 
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
|
|
|
|
|
Matthew Faithfull wrote: Pure HTML from templates on the client side and anything and everything else will be autogenerated.
Hmmm...you've just given me an idea for how to crawl out of the primordial ooze of web development.
Matthew Faithfull wrote: I'm stubborn like that
Me too!
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
Marc Clifton wrote: Not to mention how klunky the supporting technologies like javascript, jQuery, css, html feel. It's rather depressing how pathetic the web development environment and technology stack kludge actually is, and more depressing is that we all seem to just accept it.
I feel that way about all this CRAP!!! we're expected to accept as 'standards' (HTML/DOM). 
Committees for standards make unbearably slow progress. 
This is equally disadvantageous because of a larger user base which just grows from their ponderous time scales to appease interested parties (usually corporate bodies). This just adds more resistance to change and feeds back into the process.
|
|
|
|
|
dusty_dex wrote: we're expected to accept as 'standards' (HTML/DOM).
What's particularly annoying is that the so-called standards are only implemented partially, or with deviation. I just today did an "inspect source" on a web page and grimaced in disgust as I saw 3 if-else blocks to handle differences in IE 7, 7, and 8, and this occurred in numerous places throughout the HTML.
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
6502 opcodes which had to be converted into string format so that it could be called from ATARI BASIC.
A nightmare. BBC Basic had a built-in assembler which was far more friendly. I can be thankful for not having to enter code via hex keypad (KIM-1) or horror of horrors; toggle switches of the MITS Altair. 
|
|
|
|
|
dusty_dex wrote: or horror of horrors; toggle switches of the MITS Altair.
That stuff was cool! I remember in 8th grade being taught by the chemistry teacher how to enter the bootstrap code into the PDP/11 with toggle switches. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me what exactly I was doing and why. It was only later that I realized I was entering opcodes and toggling the "increment memory" for each binary code.
But yeah, I'm glad we don't have to do that anymore.
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
Marc Clifton wrote: I remember in 8th grade being taught by the chemistry teacher how to enter the bootstrap code into the PDP/11 with toggle switches.
Did he deliberately not have a serial line to a terminal?
What a bastard. 
|
|
|
|
|
dusty_dex wrote: Did he deliberately not have a serial line to a terminal?
The machine was hooked up to a teletype with a good old punch tape for saving programs. Which wouldn't work until you booted the computer.
Marc
|
|
|
|
|
Terrence Dorsey wrote: How did you learn machine code?
"Z80 machine code (or assembly language) for the absolute beginner" and Devpac[^] for ZX Sinclair Spectrum
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Rant 
Admin
Submit an article or tip
Post your Blog
