Know any Fortran programmers who need a more interesting job?

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

Noel Chiappa wrote:
> It's worth teaching a bit of machine/assembler language, so that students
> understand how computers _actually work_, underneath.
> 
> [example of students who wrote octal math for CLU]

Back in 1983 I needed an assembler for the Motorola 6809, so I wrote one
in Lisp on a TRS-80 Model I. I know very well how things really work (I
design microprocessors at the transistor level) and yet I created a hex
math package in Lisp just like in your example. Sure it was orders of
magnitude slower than using the language's native math and doing all the
conversions in the i/o routines, but it was very elegant and was fast
enough for the sizes of the programs we needed to assemble.

So while I insist on knowing all the details, I also enjoy tools that
don't depend on me knowing.

-- Jecel