29 Jun
2004
29 Jun
'04
10:28 a.m.
In our opinion, however, the most useful function
served by a
knowledge of assembler
language programming is to give the user a much closer awareness of
how the computer
works, as well as inestimably greater control over its workings, than
is feasible with
a higher level language. In our experience, the higher level language
user who is
familiar with assembler language is a more efficient - even happier -
programmer than
one who is not.
I would definitely agree with that. Even though most of the (little)
programming I do now is in C, I am still darn glad I learnt assembler and
machine code. I think it makes me a slightly better programmer. And I
can't imagine a good computer hardware designer who doesn't understand
assembler!
Those readers who want to proceed further,
particularly into systems
programming, will be
ready after reading this book to refer to the manuals. A warning
should be given that much
less care goes into [the] preparation of the descriptive literature
than into the machine
itself and its software, and the manuals contain many obscurities and
errors.
The PERQ POS manuals are a classic example of this. They're great at
reminding you of the details (the exact arguments to a system routine,
etc) if you already understand things, but they're really obscure if you
don't. It took me a long time to figure out some bits of those manuals...
-tony