7 ms·

This gives me flashbacks to undergrad engineering courses. Nearly none of my professors, at a top 10 electrical engineering program, were able to explain things

This gives me flashbacks to undergrad engineering courses. Nearly none of my professors, at a top 10 electrical engineering program, were able to explain things very well. Then you'd have to dive into poorly written textbooks to figure out what was going on. Kids these days have no idea how good things are with lots of youtube videos and online tutorials that give clear explanations for how things work. Even then, I noticed my old engineering program is still managing to fuck things up by doing things like using synthetic, poorly documented fictional microprocessors to teach assembly and computer architecture.

WalterBright 4y ago
I have no idea why someone would want to teach with a fictional microprocessor.
- rednab 4y ago
  [I'm well aware of who I am replying to here, I'm merely taking the bait and providing some hopefully fun links for people to dig into. :)] Because that's how Professor Wirth ¹) does it ²), because it allows for some interesting educational side-treks ³), and because the difference between a fictional and real microprocessor is smaller than some might think ⁴). ¹) https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/index.html https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/index.html ²) https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/CompilerConstruction/index.html https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/CompilerConstruction/index.... ³) "So what instruction would you add to this CPU to make the work we've been doing easier? Great, implement that instruction in the provided emulator." ⁴) https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/index.html https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/index.html (edit: And, of course, there's FPGA implementations of Professor Knuth's MMIX (http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/ http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/), too: https://github.com/tommythorn/fpgammix https://github.com/tommythorn/fpgammix)
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Yeah, well, I learned on a real 8 bit microprocessor (6800). It has about 40 instructions, all are simple. It's quite a dopamine hit to run your first program on an embedded system and see it working. It felt like being Master of the Universe! (FPGAs did not appear for another decade.)
nicbou 4y ago
Khan Academy was my teacher

WalterBright 4y ago

I have no idea why someone would want to teach with a fictional microprocessor.

rednab 4y ago
[I'm well aware of who I am replying to here, I'm merely taking the bait and providing some hopefully fun links for people to dig into. :)] Because that's how Professor Wirth ¹) does it ²), because it allows for some interesting educational side-treks ³), and because the difference between a fictional and real microprocessor is smaller than some might think ⁴). ¹) https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/index.html https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/index.html ²) https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/CompilerConstruction/index.html https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/CompilerConstruction/index.... ³) "So what instruction would you add to this CPU to make the work we've been doing easier? Great, implement that instruction in the provided emulator." ⁴) https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/index.html https://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/FPGA-relatedWork/index.html (edit: And, of course, there's FPGA implementations of Professor Knuth's MMIX (http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/ http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/), too: https://github.com/tommythorn/fpgammix https://github.com/tommythorn/fpgammix)
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Yeah, well, I learned on a real 8 bit microprocessor (6800). It has about 40 instructions, all are simple. It's quite a dopamine hit to run your first program on an embedded system and see it working. It felt like being Master of the Universe! (FPGAs did not appear for another decade.)

nicbou 4y ago

Khan Academy was my teacher