On 02/20/2015 12:27 PM, Mouse wrote:
> Folks in
the lab would stop looking up the instruction encodings and
> would just ask me...I could do the assembly in my head...
[...]
I'm not at all certain that such a skill is even marginally valuable
today. Who codes much in assembly, much less machine code?
Those two sentences are only somewhat related. Knowing instruction
encoding is important to anyone who is writing or maintaining an
assembler or disassembler.
Uh, huh--and probably someone writing a good optimizing compiler. But
that's how many people outside the vast sea of script kiddies?
To put it another way, how many advertisements for job openings include
"must recognize and interpret Super Wazoo 800 machine codes"? I can't
recall ever having seen such a requirement. Generally it's something
one picks up if and when it's needed, not a particularly unique skill,
such as being able to mentally factor 20 digit integers.
--Chuck