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Anecdotally, I've always felt that what makes low-level seemingly hard is that documentation is either sparse, or written in an extremely dry way that is not en
by lordleft 4y ago
Anecdotally, I've always felt that what makes low-level seemingly hard is that documentation is either sparse, or written in an extremely dry way that is not engaging for a lot of people. Lower level stuff is prone to what I like to call "man-page syndrome"; i.e. when the resources for a software tool or conceit are presented in a kind of mathematical/formulaic format that average people can't be bothered to parse.
- Jtsummers 4y agoWhile the documentation can be hard for a novice, it's actually one of the reasons I like low-level programming. If the docs exist, they are generally clear and concise: Instruction mnemonic, parameters, result, flags, maybe number of cycles. That's about all you need to use the information effectively. It also makes browsing the documentation easy if you're a nerd like me who flips open specs and standards to read random sections and learn something new.
- scruple 4y agoOne of my favorite experiences was programming for a TI MSP430 uC. My memory is that the reference documentation was outstanding, though that was true of all of the chips I worked with in embedded.
- Jtsummers 4y agoI have never worked with that one for real, but I did look up the docs while playing around with Micro Corruption years ago. And yeah, it had good documentation. https://microcorruption.com/ https://microcorruption.com/