[oclug] Assembler (was Re: Easiest and most useful language.

[Rod Giffin]

On Tuesday 06 February 2001 18:30, bbarnett at l8r.net wrote:
> On 06-Feb-2001 David F. Skoll wrote:
> > On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Andrew Hutton wrote:
> >> If your end goal is to learn how computers work... and you feel up to
> >> it... pick up a 68000 assembly book at a used book shop.  ALL of the
> >> really clueful people I respect for their computing knowledge seem to
> >> have started with ASM of some kind.  It teaches respect, humility, and
> >> exactly WHY you do things a certain way.
> >
> > It depends on which assembler you learn.  I was lucky enough to learn
> > 6809 as my first assembler language.  The Motorola 6809 was used in the
> > Radio Shack Color Computer.  Even though it was an 8-bit processor, it
> > had a wonderful instruction set and many useful addressing modes.
> >
> > When I finally learned Intel assembler, I almost threw up.  I'm sure if
> > I'd started with x86 assembler, I would have been put off for life. :-)
>
> My first romp with assembly was with the c64.  Ah, days long gone by ;)

I remember those days.  We had little breadboard kits with a Z80 onboard and 
a whole 512 bytes of RAM when I was in college.  Had to program it with dip 
switches, and make lights blink in sequences (which were things like answers 
to mathematical connections.)  Zilog is, surprizingly enough, still making 
the Z80 for imbedded applications (Why?). 

Rod.