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From: huang@mnsinc.com (Szu-Wen Huang)
Subject: Re: What's the best language to learn? [was Re: Should I learn C or
 Pascal?]
Date: 1996/08/21
Message-ID: <4vdo19$5i8@news1.mnsinc.com>#1/1
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distribution: inet
references: <01bb8a24$88d46fe0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>
 <dewar.840082355@schonberg> <01bb8d2b$b763c5e0$32ee6fce@timhome2>
followup-to: 
 comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer
organization: Monumental Network Systems
newsgroups: 
 comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer
Date: 1996-08-21T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com) wrote:
: Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote in article
: <dewar.840082355@schonberg>...
[snip]
: > That seems false for many modern RISC architectures, and as ILP becomes
: > more and more of a factor, the instruction level semantics will become
: > more and more complex.

: Actually, RISC is usually easier to learn, just because the
: instructions sets are more orthogonal.  Now, optimizing RISC
: machines may be harder, but that's a different issue.

Ahh, so learn the "architecture" without knowing why the instruction
after the branch is always executed, why branching slows down the
machine, why moving this unrelated instruction up here avoids a
pipeline stall, because it's a "different issue"?

Of course it's easier to learn, once you've deleted the harder parts
as a "different issue"!

: The point is not to learn assembly because they will be using
: it every day, the point is to learn it so they can better
: understand what computers really are, and how they work.  You
: simply can't get the same "Ah-HA!  *Now* I understand!"
: experience from programming in a HLL that you can from
: programming assembly.

Key question is, "now I understand" *WHAT*?  Machine architecture,
or the damn sorting algorithm?