Post AdARDPjv7Zb25vSuP2 by miki@dragonscave.space
(DIR) More posts by miki@dragonscave.space
(DIR) Post #AdARDPjv7Zb25vSuP2 by miki@dragonscave.space
2023-12-24T15:43:23Z
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I wonder how long it would take a single human being to execute a simple "hello world" program in something like Apple II basic, by hand, with no electronic devices in sight.Imagine a notebook or whiteboard with all the memory contents, a piece of paper with the CPU register state and a person executing 6502 machine code by hand. It's certainly possible, people have been calculating bitcoin hashes for fun this way, but I wonder what the exact slowdown versus a real 6502 would be here.
(DIR) Post #AdARDQZK2SiGfLVxWS by amszmidt@mastodon.social
2023-12-24T15:47:21Z
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@miki that is how I was programming the HC11 for many years… pen and paper, and a small booklet with a description of the machine. Wrote bunch of programs, most working on first try when I entered them …. And how people would write stuff for the PDPs.. it isn’t that hard or strange.
(DIR) Post #AdARDRKpBqi72fjtZ2 by miki@dragonscave.space
2023-12-24T15:56:41Z
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@amszmidt Hearing stories like this, I realize how much privilege my generation has. Not only I never had to do this, my first serious attempts at programming were already in the age of high-level languages, Google search and ubiquitous internet access. Probably the golden age of learning to code (especially for a screen reader user like me), with online tutorials already freely available, but before constant SEO spam, fancy web-based IDEs and overly long videos and subtlu wrong LLM-generated articles.
(DIR) Post #AdARDS7OHHYhTISgGO by amszmidt@mastodon.social
2023-12-24T20:47:41Z
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@miki I have a long rant about how bad and annoying “modern” programming is..to the point that I think the golden age was 30-40 years ago. Whilst I’m amazed as to what hackers can create today… they also do so without any understanding of the underlying principles and workings of a computer or it’s lanaguge.
(DIR) Post #AdARDSyD6toG77Araq by miki@dragonscave.space
2023-12-25T10:26:17Z
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@amszmidt I don't know if I agree. The people 30 years ago probably didn't know how a CPU actually worked either. People making the CPU didn't know much about the physics and chemistry of transistors. The people who did probably didn't understand the underlying quantum mechanics that explain why these chemical reactions work the way they do. It's all abstractions all the way down, the right abstraction used to be hole patterns on punch cards, now it's functions in a Javascript framework.I'm not saying knowing more about how computers work isn't useful, to the contrary, and I do think that modern software could do most of what it does with a fraction of a fraction of the resources, but at what cost? To the user, to the programmer, to security?
(DIR) Post #AdARDU299kYJPc1WMq by patricus@piggo.space
2023-12-25T11:54:36.670764Z
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@miki @amszmidt yeah, not everyone needs to know how their computer works on a chemical or even freakin molecular level, that's just insane.I can code with C#, it's pretty easy, I can't even understand how assembler works, and it's crappy and useless anyway, or even C++ or similar.
(DIR) Post #AdARDUtJy35S4WtzFY by amszmidt@mastodon.social
2023-12-25T11:58:27Z
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@patricus @miki We aren't talking about everyone. But a programmer of any sort should know how a computer works, for one .. it is not a complicated device. 30-40 years ago people did know how CPU's worked, and it was a normal thing to even build your own computer.To say that "assembler is crappy and useless" is to literally not understanding, or even wanting to understand the beyond amazing things we do with computers. Assembler is not that complicated.
(DIR) Post #AdARDVhewtLwaeSBiC by hayley@social.applied-langua.ge
2023-12-25T12:06:43.603527Z
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@amszmidt @patricus @miki to be fair, C# runs on pixie dust and assembly is never harmed
(DIR) Post #AdASCTKIOsfqsoau5g by amszmidt@mastodon.social
2023-12-25T12:06:52Z
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@miki you’d be pleasantly surprised, people made their own CPUs using TTLS for ages, the Art of Electronics has a amazing chapter on the workings of transistors. It is true that we abstract many concepts, and we can still do so with the crazy stuff you see in a x86 without understanding each minute detail and still know something about writing assembler. The Art of Computer Programming for example has the MMIX processor that is used specifically for just understanding.
(DIR) Post #AdASCU9hJln5SEdxD6 by amszmidt@mastodon.social
2023-12-25T12:12:29Z
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@miki and I would really want to argue that all programmers should make their own CPU and write something for it.. it should even be a mandatory part of the school curriculum .. just like having some theoretical understanding oh physics or chemistry.
(DIR) Post #AdASCV5Tqw0mLRg6HA by amszmidt@mastodon.social
2023-12-25T12:13:52Z
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@miki computers and programming hasn’t change significantly in 60 years.
(DIR) Post #AdASCVrKz0ICjs4Js0 by hayley@social.applied-langua.ge
2023-12-25T12:17:47.858693Z
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@amszmidt @miki multi-core/parallel computers and running untrusted code are prevalent, and the von Neumann bottleneck especially sucks now