Re: use of backward single quote in procedure names, was: DST (summer time) offset

On 16 Mar, John Cartmell wrote in message
<4f80ec1477john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

In article <gemini.jxsw7r004a6e8062s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jeremy Nicoll - news posts <jn.nntp.scrap001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

But, leaving aside people reading assembler tutorials in Qercus, the
fundamental problem with learning to write in any machine's assembler
is that you need to have a good grasp of the architecture of the
machine. If we are pretending that an absolute beginner is trying to
learn, does that mean we have to teach machine architecture concepts
before we teach the details of the specific machine? How about eg:
registers and when they can be used, stacks (if the machine has them),
addressing modes, pipelining, parallelism, memory & fetch protection,
real and virtual addresses, data representation, bit twiddling ...
need I go on?

I'm looking at the problems of getting started - and at ways of reducing
the height of that wall that faces beginners. Dabblers can be satisfied
that they understand bits - and progress no further - use their skills
to produce fragments of code to plug into their BASIC programs, or learn
more to progress further.

The problem is that it's essential to learn more before the stuff learned
in the pages of Qercus can even be used to supplement simple BASIC.
Assembly language isn't BASIC, and there's a big gap between "Yes, I
understand what they're doing in that example" and "Yes, I can now write
my own routine to do what I need". That is the point at which your
beginners, who -- remember -- can't install Lua, will founder.

Their choice. If you want to take on the task of teaching the lot then
you're welcome; finding ways and means of making the early foothills
accessible is hard enough! ;-)

I don't think you've grasped how hard... We can only hope that those who
have followed Assembly Line and failed don't lose interest in getting into
programming through more appropriate languages.

--
Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England

http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/

.

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