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From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: What's the best language to learn? [was Re: Should I learn C or
 Pascal?]
Date: 1996/08/16
Message-ID: <dewar.840249854@schonberg>#1/1
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references: <4u7hi6$s2b@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> <4uo74j$95p@ns.broadvision.com>
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organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
newsgroups: 
 comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer
Date: 1996-08-16T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Darin says

"Actually, some assemblers aren't so basic and low level.  VAX MACRO
was almost an HLL in itself."

That seems a bit stretched. The VAX instruction set is register oriented
and pretty conventional. Yes, it has a few CISC style instructions (most
of which you should never use if you are intersted in efficiency) that
do things analogous to HLL semantics, but to say it was almost an HLL
in itself is going too far.

On the other hand, there definitely ARE machines where that characterization
makes more sense. The B5500 and the KDF-9 are examples, and I would think
even the Inmos Transputer is a better example than the VAX.