Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

[Fred Cisin]

On Fri, 22 May 2020, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
> Now even embedded systems are running with gigahertz clock speeds!  Over my 
> career I have seen the change from three assembler courses in a six-semester 
> program to just one 'so they can get their hands wet'!
>
> In the end, when asked 'why do we have to learn this?' I ended up just saying 
> "When embedded systems start displaying really weird problems in a worldwide 
> installed base, some knowledge of assembler may be the only way to fix it.  
> People who can will be the first to be hired and the last to go if a company 
> down-sizes! Even when teaching C I showed them how to get down and understand 
> the assembler in the debugger.
>
> I am retired from teaching now now and write in C and SQL :-) One day I will 
> do some PDP-11 assembler just for old time's sake on my PiDP-11!


Phillipe Kahn (Borland) included assembler in "Turbo Debugger And Tools", 
but said that assembler was only for debugging.


Clancy and Harvey (UC Berkeley undergad CS) said, "Nobody uses assembler 
any more, nor ever will again."  They taught programming with SCHEME (a 
LISP variant)
They gave a demo of how wonderful their mindset and recursion are.  They 
gave an example of a problem "that can not be done without recursion"! 
While they were balancing their parentheses, I doodled a solution in C, 
BASIC, and was partway through COBOL.  Recursion is wonderful for some 
things; thinking that it is the only solution is demented.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com