3 ms·

I feel like this is an important point. One could easily say "omg look at this horrible programming language I have to deal with -- 30001000: 55 30001001: 8b

I feel like this is an important point. One could easily say "omg look at this horrible programming language I have to deal with -- 30001000: 55 30001001: 8b ec 30001003: 6a ff 30001005: 68 90 10 00 30 3000100a: 68 91 dc 4c 30" When it's just x86 and nobody is supposed to be using it directly. Of course, we have workable tools that sit on top of machine code so we don't have to, and apparently that wasn't the case for OP, but I think that's more of a statement about their inability to do the one thing makes progress in computing possible: create abstractions.

jrochkind1 13y ago
There was certainly a time that people wrote assembler, and even machine code, directly. People of course still do write assembler directly (but not as much as they used to!), but I don't think many have written machine code directly for a while. (Maybe for some specialized hardware?). But yeah, it's good to note that this underlying sort of vm code wasn't intended to be written by humans... but I wouldn't say the customers were wrong, exactly, to successfully use it to do high business value things with the product they were locked into, that they couldn't otherwise. It does make one think how happy the customers would have been if the vendor had provided an actually intended fleible scripting or 'macro' language, and then to think about the aspects of the market that still didn't lead to the vendor doing so.