18 Aug
2001
18 Aug
'01
5:41 a.m.
On Sat, Aug 18, 2001 at 08:46:18AM -0700, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
On Sat, 18 Aug 2001, Derek Peschel wrote:
That is a really fucked up thing to do to a beginner for their FIRST
program. START with something so grossly trivial that they can do it with
NO problems, and get a token success in their first attempt. THEN you can
make them work in subsequent projects.
I never said that fancy macros were for beginners! I was just pointing out
the extreme case of what you can do with a good macro processor. The
beginners WILL probably want to use the PRINT macro, however.
Also, I mentioned languages with embedded assemblers, and that might be a
useful way to teach assembler -- by ignoring it at first and then using it
in small pieces.
-- Derek
So that
you may print "HELLO WORLD". It's essential for the newbie.
_Really_ fancy assemblers can imitate a Turing machine at assembly time.
Then your program can contain whatever you want (list of prime numbers,
factorial, counterexample to Fermat's last theorem, etc.) and your code need
not do any calculation at all. The risk is that your program may take an
infinitely long time to assemble!