4 ms·
Assembly mnemonics and their cousin pin names are so excessively terse. I wish it was mandatory to expand acronyms in a dedicated field in datasheets. So often
by knolax 7y ago
Assembly mnemonics and their cousin pin names are so excessively terse. I wish it was mandatory to expand acronyms in a dedicated field in datasheets. So often you'll find pin names like "NCE" where you're just expected to know a priori that it means "active-low Chip Enable" and it's so counterproductive.
- tenebrisalietum 7y agoAssembly mnemonics I think are terse to make it dirt simple for assemblers to read them, which themselves had to be hand-entered via hex until they became "self-hosting." Assemblers could not be on the same level as compilers. This was definitely very needed when these CPUs were new in the 70's and such. I've always liked how 6502 neatly has everything in 3 letter opcodes. But that's not scalable given modern CPU capabilities.
- userbinator 7y ago...and for humans to read and write them, because what could be a single symbol in an HLL ('+') turns into several latters ('ADD') in Asm. Some companies experimented with "symbolic Asm" which was even terser, and made it look more like an HLL.