From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: "Tim Behrendsen" Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/07 Message-ID: <01bb846d$c6c01780$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 172704290 references: <01bb73e3.1c6a0060$6bf467ce@dave.iceslimited.com> <1996Jul20.124025.122789@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <01bb7b06$311fabc0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <31FBC584.4188@ivic.qc.ca> <01bb7da2$6c505ac0$96ee6fcf@timhome2> <01bb8027$de0e9c80$96ee6fcf@timhome2> <4u5a11$siv@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <01bb8342$88cc6f40$32ee6fcf@timhome2> <4u86lc$2gu@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 organization: A-SIS mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-08-07T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Fergus Henderson wrote in article <4u86lc$2gu@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>... > "Tim Behrendsen" writes: > > >This seems to be a common theme; that programming things in > >assembly in necessarily harder than programming in a HLL. > > > >Maybe I'm weird, but I just don't see assembly as being harder > >than a HLL, and in fact, it seems to me that it's much easier. > >The number of fundamental things to learn is *very* small, and > >I would think that being able to show a problem in terms of the > >"array of memory" being manipulated would just make it infinitely > >easier than having to wrestle with all the abstract nonsense. > > > >Now, you wouldn't want to *maintain* large systems of assembly, > >which is why HLLs have taken over the world, but it seems to > >me that assembly per se is just not that hard to use. > > N lines of assembler is not much more difficult to understand > or to code than N lines of C. But if you want the students to > understand say quicksort, it's a lot easier showing them 20 lines > of C than 100 lines of assembler. Who's talking about showing them? I would suggest that if they wrote a quicksort in assembler, they will have a much better "feel" for the algorithm, than if they wrote it in C. > Also, we want to get our students into the habit of writing > robust and reusable code, and this is very difficult in assembler. > At least C has malloc()/free(); with assembler, you need to write > the memory management from scratch. Well, I don't the student has to rewrite all the library routines! Nothing precludes you from using them from assembler. -- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)