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Interesting. I had an assembly course taught on a VAX system in 2001. At the time, I had the impression it was because the instructor had access to it and felt
by lc9er 5y ago
Interesting. I had an assembly course taught on a VAX system in 2001. At the time, I had the impression it was because the instructor had access to it and felt it was of historical significance. I wish I could remember more about the experience.
- bwanab 5y agoI’d say it was because the VAX (and the PDP-11 family that preceded it) has one of the cleanest instruction sets of any processor family that was ever extensively used. It was almost as easy as C to program in its assembly language.
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y agoYes, and... each of the earlier processors had certain 'corner cases' in the way they handled setting (or not) flag bits; DEC s/w had to check these corner cases and execute a proper set of instructions for that specific machine. But yes, conceptually, the orthogonal addressing modes, and 'obvious' instruction names influenced probably 2 generations of students (for the better). The major lesson learned tho, I think, was: never be stingy with address bits! (16 is way too few; and even later 22-bit addresses weren't enough.)