28 Jun
2001
28 Jun
'01
8:11 a.m.
On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Gene Ehrich wrote:
I remember back in the early days at IBM right before
the 360 was announced
that they were talking in the industry of the possibility of a
disassembler. Most people poo-poo'd it as impossible. Datamation magazine
had a cartoon with a picture of a machine labeled disassembler with a
conveyer belt on each side. A worker was feeding cans of applesauce into
the machine and on the other side apples were coming out.
Maybe hindsight is always 20/20, but I don't see why machine code
disassembly would be viewed as an impossible task? I mean, weren't people
able to look at hex or octal dumps and translate them into the
corresponding mnemonics? This generally isn't a task that requires a high
IQ, it's basically a simple lookup operation. Hell, the problem is better
suited to computer based solutions than it is to people doing it.
-brian.