5 ms·

Ok. I'll toot my own horn. In ~1983 I wrote the first iteration of Sensible Solutions for O'Hanlon Computer Systems using MASM. Of course, it had to run in l

Ok. I'll toot my own horn. In ~1983 I wrote the first iteration of Sensible Solutions for O'Hanlon Computer Systems using MASM. Of course, it had to run in less than 64k. Basically, it was a VM that would run pseudo code. And, the compiler was written in ASM also. In 1985 I wrote TAS, again using MASM. Again, a VM. The language it compiled (in both cases) was written to create business accounting applications, which I also wrote. Originally I called them Level 1, 2 and 3 where Level 2 was basic bookkeeping and Level 3 was a full blown Accounting package including invoicing, purchasing, etc. Unfortunately, this was during the time of dBase and I got clobbered in Infoworld for not being like dBase. So, I wrote a compiler for dBase and called it dBFast. Sold a lot of copies through Egghead and others. In all three of these we made a ton of money and, even more, created a whole group of people who became "pseudo programmers." I say pseudo because they could program in TAS, not necessarily in anything else. I was very proud of what I did and hope there is one more language in me to make programming on the web significantly easier than it is now. If you've never programmed in assembler I recommend it to anyone. Just try something simple. Until you do, you won't appreciate what we have today. Especially if you're running on CP/M or early DOS!

macjohnmcc 11y ago
I used to do some assembly on 68000, 6502 and some Z80. It's nice to have those simpler CPUs and the simpler hardware to learn an assembly language on.
- protomyth 11y ago
  I did 6502 in high school from a book and later did 6809 (EE class) and 8088 in college. The funny part was our compiler target for the CSci Compiler Course was an IBM 370 on which they taught the required assembler course. Of that group I liked the 6809 best. The 370 was ok and it sure had a lot more registers. We didn't write our compilers in assembly, but instead used the department's chosen language: Modula-2. It was very odd translating from the dragon book to Modula-2.
  - friendzis 11y ago
    NB: Just a comment, could not (yet) watch the video. Our course was very simple with 8051 compiled with IAR, IIRC. I hated the experience: quite a lot of logic is backwards and you have to come up with something like ABI in order not to make huge mess. Anyway, this actually skyrocketed my understanding of C: C is nothing more than (rather thin, I would say) wrappers around assembly, which in turn is wrappers around machine instructions. That's why C is fast. That's why you cannot have first-class functions, return multiple (compile time unknown) values, etc.. But nothing beats spending 10+ hours debugging simple I2C (or SPI, can't remember) baremetal ARM program, first weeding out vendor libs, then actually diving into assembly only to find out that CPU is buggy.
    - jwdunne 11y ago
      This is similar to what I experienced, sort of like an enlightenment moment. In C, I see a thin veneer over assembly, but that veneer has been designed to look thicker than it actually is. I came to appreciate the abstraction and now understand why it's so long lived.
  - bencollier49 11y ago
    Argh! Modula-2, that brings back memories. They were still teaching it as an introductory language when I went to uni in 1997. The language seemed a tad irrelevant.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      It wasn't bad and did well to teach a lot of concepts, but it being on an IBM 370 made for some pain. I will say XEDIT did have some ok features but was a painful experience overall.
Zardoz84 11y ago
> If you've never programmed in assembler I recommend it to anyone. Just try something simple. Until you do, you won't appreciate what we have today. Especially if you're running on CP/M or early DOS! I found very pleasant write a clone of Wozniak's machine code for my toy CPU/Computer
socceroos 11y ago
I've always had a soft spot for assembler code. I've been writing hobby kernels for almost a decade now ala Plan9 - haven't every really taken any of them far enough to be useful, but it's a rich journey of discovery. I love discovery.
rrich 11y ago
Now there is a language I haven't heard about in a very long time. I actually briefly worked for a company that developed a whole system with TAS, that they then sold to optometrists.

macjohnmcc 11y ago

I used to do some assembly on 68000, 6502 and some Z80. It's nice to have those simpler CPUs and the simpler hardware to learn an assembly language on.

protomyth 11y ago
I did 6502 in high school from a book and later did 6809 (EE class) and 8088 in college. The funny part was our compiler target for the CSci Compiler Course was an IBM 370 on which they taught the required assembler course. Of that group I liked the 6809 best. The 370 was ok and it sure had a lot more registers. We didn't write our compilers in assembly, but instead used the department's chosen language: Modula-2. It was very odd translating from the dragon book to Modula-2.
- friendzis 11y ago
  NB: Just a comment, could not (yet) watch the video. Our course was very simple with 8051 compiled with IAR, IIRC. I hated the experience: quite a lot of logic is backwards and you have to come up with something like ABI in order not to make huge mess. Anyway, this actually skyrocketed my understanding of C: C is nothing more than (rather thin, I would say) wrappers around assembly, which in turn is wrappers around machine instructions. That's why C is fast. That's why you cannot have first-class functions, return multiple (compile time unknown) values, etc.. But nothing beats spending 10+ hours debugging simple I2C (or SPI, can't remember) baremetal ARM program, first weeding out vendor libs, then actually diving into assembly only to find out that CPU is buggy.
  - jwdunne 11y ago
    This is similar to what I experienced, sort of like an enlightenment moment. In C, I see a thin veneer over assembly, but that veneer has been designed to look thicker than it actually is. I came to appreciate the abstraction and now understand why it's so long lived.
- bencollier49 11y ago
  Argh! Modula-2, that brings back memories. They were still teaching it as an introductory language when I went to uni in 1997. The language seemed a tad irrelevant.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    It wasn't bad and did well to teach a lot of concepts, but it being on an IBM 370 made for some pain. I will say XEDIT did have some ok features but was a painful experience overall.

Zardoz84 11y ago

> If you've never programmed in assembler I recommend it to anyone. Just try something simple. Until you do, you won't appreciate what we have today. Especially if you're running on CP/M or early DOS! I found very pleasant write a clone of Wozniak's machine code for my toy CPU/Computer

socceroos 11y ago

I've always had a soft spot for assembler code. I've been writing hobby kernels for almost a decade now ala Plan9 - haven't every really taken any of them far enough to be useful, but it's a rich journey of discovery. I love discovery.

rrich 11y ago

Now there is a language I haven't heard about in a very long time. I actually briefly worked for a company that developed a whole system with TAS, that they then sold to optometrists.