and to take this in the other direction, TFA> The association between this numeric form and its meaning under the ISA is completely arbitrary P> It's not like

and to take this in the other direction, TFA> The association between this numeric form and its meaning under the ISA is completely arbitrary P> It's not like it's just hex codes The numeric form of machine code, appropriately in hex or octal, is not arBITrary at all, the bits mean things that help group and decode the instruction with minimal logic. In the first example in the article, it's easy to see the registers he's talking about, and it would be easy after that to decode the addressing modes, alu functions, etc.