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=1.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,INVALID_MSGID, PP_MIME_FAKE_ASCII_TEXT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: raffael@tiac.net (Raffael Cavallaro) Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/03 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 171864911 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> <4toc18$4j0@ns3.iamerica.net> organization: The Very Large Fred Corporation newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-08-03T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <4toc18$4j0@ns3.iamerica.net>, amusgrov@varmm.com (AJ Musgrove) wrote: > In the military, soldiers are taught how to disassemble guns. > Why? There are people who could do that for them. If one FULLY understands the > tools they are using, one can use them better. Period. Soldiers don't take their weapons apart and reassemble them so they can "fully" understand them. Most infantrymen are not too bright, and they sure as hell don't "fully understand" how the blowback mechanism of an automatic rifle functions. Soldiers are taught to disassemble guns for a simple reason--in order to clean the parts and keep their weapons in operating condition. In the field of battle, there aren't gun repair shops, so you have to do it yourself. Unless you're planning to use your computer away from civilization (and some people do--I used to when I did field archaeology) you don't need to know how to take it apart and put it back together -- there are professional technicians for that. Of course, if you're writing software, it is advantageous to know how your microprocessor works, what its instructions are, busses, registers etc. so you can code for speed/low memory if you need to. Of course, if you're not writing such software, you can remain blissfully ignorant of such things. To this day I have no idea what the processor instructions or machine architecture were on the system I first learned to program on, but it didn't stop me from writing fully functional software. Of course, my programs might have been a bit faster if I had known, but a decent compiler often obviates the one time necessity to "get down to the metal." This is only becoming *increasingly* true. As compiler technology advances, assembly language programming is becoming less and less necessary. just my 2� Raf