🚀 go-pugleaf

On 4/26/18 4:23 PM, manh...@gmail.com wrote:
> Currently how many programmers coding in machine code? 
> Currently how many programmers coding in Assembly? 

These are unanswerable questions.
No one even knows how many programmers there are.

Em quinta-feira, 26 de abril de 2018 20:47:51 UTC-3, Al Kossow  escreveu:
> On 4/26/18 4:23 PM, manh...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Currently how many programmers coding in machine code? 
> > Currently how many programmers coding in Assembly? 
> 
> These are unanswerable questions.
> No one even knows how many programmers there are.

What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in machine code?

What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in Assembly?

manh...@gmail.com wrote:

> Al Kossow escreveu:
>
>> manh...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>> Currently how many programmers coding in machine code?
>>> Currently how many programmers coding in Assembly?
>>
>> These are unanswerable questions.
>> No one even knows how many programmers there are.
> 
> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in machine code?
> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in Assembly?

Your chatbot needs some work, it seems to have got fixated on machine 
code and assembly programmers ... I think it's traditional to feed them 
training data from twitter rather than usenet?

On 2018-04-26, Al Kossow <a...@bitsavers.org> wrote:
> On 4/26/18 4:23 PM, manh...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Currently how many programmers coding in machine code? 
>> Currently how many programmers coding in Assembly? 
>
> These are unanswerable questions.
> No one even knows how many programmers there are.
>
>
>

Who knows what name Achilles used when he went to live among the
women?.. or why the devil has cloven hooves.


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

On 2018-04-26 7:47 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
> On 4/26/18 4:23 PM, manh...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Currently how many programmers coding in machine code? Currently
>> how many programmers coding in Assembly?
> 
> These are unanswerable questions. No one even knows how many
> programmers there are.
> 
> 
> 
I have a couple data points. I worked on the ISA of a co-processor for
automotive and general aviation engine controllers. We wrote a C
compiler for this processor. We did not initially provide an assembler
for this processor (compile directly to machine code) This a heavily
used processor with hundreds of new applications per year (10's million
devices per year) Two years after release we released an assembler. No
one had ever complained to support.

Since then I know of a single piece of application code written in
assembler that has been released for shipment by a customer.

w..

On 4/27/2018 9:08 AM, Walter Banks wrote:
> On 2018-04-26 7:47 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
>> On 4/26/18 4:23 PM, manh...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Currently how many programmers coding in machine code? Currently
>>> how many programmers coding in Assembly?
>>
>> These are unanswerable questions. No one even knows how many
>> programmers there are.
>>
>>
>>
> I have a couple data points. I worked on the ISA of a co-processor for
> automotive and general aviation engine controllers. We wrote a C
> compiler for this processor. We did not initially provide an assembler
> for this processor (compile directly to machine code) This a heavily
> used processor with hundreds of new applications per year (10's million
> devices per year) Two years after release we released an assembler. No
> one had ever complained to support.
> 
> Since then I know of a single piece of application code written in
> assembler that has been released for shipment by a customer.
> 

I know Walter Banks is *not* discussing an x86 processor....  but...

People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
logically devised instruction set.


-- 
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

On 27/04/2018 15:25, Charles Richmond wrote:
> 
> I know Walter Banks is *not* discussing an x86 processor....  but...

Sounds like one of the Siemens' processors?


>   So lets
> say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
> assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
> logically devised instruction set.

Yes - ish; the 68000  appeared just too late when the world was
moving en masse onto HLL.

Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> writes:
>On 4/27/2018 9:08 AM, Walter Banks wrote:

>> Since then I know of a single piece of application code written in
>> assembler that has been released for shipment by a customer.
>> 
>
>I know Walter Banks is *not* discussing an x86 processor....  but...
>
>People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.

Nonsense.  It's not more awful than IBM 360, HP-3000 or the Univac.  Have
you actually written any 64-bit x86 assembler?   This isn't an 8086 anymore.

People don't program in assembler because it doesn't make
sense to do so for anyone other than a handful of kernel
programmers that need to write the bootstrap code for the
processor.

On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 14:56:03 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
wrote: 

> Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> writes:
>>On 4/27/2018 9:08 AM, Walter Banks wrote:
> 
>>> Since then I know of a single piece of application code written in
>>> assembler that has been released for shipment by a customer.
>>> 
>>
>>I know Walter Banks is *not* discussing an x86 processor....  but...
>>
>>People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>>assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.
> 
> Nonsense.  It's not more awful than IBM 360, HP-3000 or the Univac. 
> Have you actually written any 64-bit x86 assembler?   This isn't an
> 8086 anymore. 
> 
> People don't program in assembler because it doesn't make
> sense to do so for anyone other than a handful of kernel
> programmers that need to write the bootstrap code for the
> processor.
> 
> 

there are at least 3 people still subscribed to 
news:comp.lang.assembler.x86

-- 
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

"Kerr-Mudd,John" <nots...@invalid.org> writes:
>On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 14:56:03 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>wrote: 
>
>> Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> writes:
>>>On 4/27/2018 9:08 AM, Walter Banks wrote:
>> 
>>>> Since then I know of a single piece of application code written in
>>>> assembler that has been released for shipment by a customer.
>>>> 
>>>
>>>I know Walter Banks is *not* discussing an x86 processor....  but...
>>>
>>>People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>>>assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.
>> 
>> Nonsense.  It's not more awful than IBM 360, HP-3000 or the Univac. 
>> Have you actually written any 64-bit x86 assembler?   This isn't an
>> 8086 anymore. 
>> 
>> People don't program in assembler because it doesn't make
>> sense to do so for anyone other than a handful of kernel
>> programmers that need to write the bootstrap code for the
>> processor.
>> 
>> 
>
>there are at least 3 people still subscribed to 
>news:comp.lang.assembler.x86

Yeah, that's the same three who post to alt.os.development about
their new version of DOS or OS/2 look-a-like running in segmented
16-bit mode :-)

On 2018-04-27, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:

> People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
> assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
> say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
> assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
> logically devised instruction set.

When x86 first came out, I was heavily into assembly language programming -
mostly IBM 360 and clones, but a few others as well.  Early x86 programming
was sufficiently horrible that I decided to get out of assembly language
programming.  Fortunately C was on the rise, so I had somewhere to go.
That saved me a lot of pain: not all, because even in C I had to worry
about that damned 64K barrier imposed by the segmented architecture.
Newer models of x86 might be better, but I don't care anymore.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  Fight low-contrast text in web pages!  http://contrastrebellion.com

In article <pbvbrg$ee1$1...@dont-email.me>,
Charles Richmond  <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
>People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
>say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
>assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
>logically devised instruction set.

Having spent a certain amount of time coding for the minimal highly
logical PDP-8, with an instruction set so small you could memorize it
(including the binary values) I'll take the x86 any day.  What it may
lack in symmetry it makes up in ability to get stuff done.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
>On 2018-04-27, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
>
>> People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>> assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
>> say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
>> assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
>> logically devised instruction set.
>
>When x86 first came out, I was heavily into assembly language programming -
>mostly IBM 360 and clones, but a few others as well.  Early x86 programming
>was sufficiently horrible that I decided to get out of assembly language
>programming.  Fortunately C was on the rise, so I had somewhere to go.
>That saved me a lot of pain: not all, because even in C I had to worry
>about that damned 64K barrier imposed by the segmented architecture.
>Newer models of x86 might be better, but I don't care anymore.

They've been better since 1985 (80386 32-bit flat address space).

Got much better when AMD added 64-bit support to the opteron in 2003 (flat address
space across the entire 64-bit physical address, a bunch more registers,
supports 32-bit code, etc.)

Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
> On 4/27/2018 9:08 AM, Walter Banks wrote:
>> On 2018-04-26 7:47 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
>>> On 4/26/18 4:23 PM, manh...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> Currently how many programmers coding in machine code? Currently
>>>> how many programmers coding in Assembly?
>>> 
>>> These are unanswerable questions. No one even knows how many
>>> programmers there are.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> I have a couple data points. I worked on the ISA of a co-processor for
>> automotive and general aviation engine controllers. We wrote a C
>> compiler for this processor. We did not initially provide an assembler
>> for this processor (compile directly to machine code) This a heavily
>> used processor with hundreds of new applications per year (10's million
>> devices per year) Two years after release we released an assembler. No
>> one had ever complained to support.
>> 
>> Since then I know of a single piece of application code written in
>> assembler that has been released for shipment by a customer.
>> 
> 
> I know Walter Banks is *not* discussing an x86 processor....  but...
> 
> People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
> assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
> say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
> assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
> logically devised instruction set.
> 
> 

The thing with the x86 is that the instruction set has improved over the
years. I don't know about x86-64, but with -32 you can largely ignore a lot
of the 8-  and 16-bit cruft, just stick to the 32-bit instructions, and
it's not a completely terrible architecture.(IME)

-- 
Pete

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2018-04-27, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
> 
>> People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>> assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
>> say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
>> assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
>> logically devised instruction set.
> 
> When x86 first came out, I was heavily into assembly language programming -
> mostly IBM 360 and clones, but a few others as well.  Early x86 programming
> was sufficiently horrible that I decided to get out of assembly language
> programming.  Fortunately C was on the rise, so I had somewhere to go.
> That saved me a lot of pain: not all, because even in C I had to worry
> about that damned 64K barrier imposed by the segmented architecture.
> Newer models of x86 might be better, but I don't care anymore.
> 

That trash went away a llooonnnggg time ago. Good to be reminded, though,
I'd forgotten how truly horrible it used to be, even in C.

-- 
Pete

On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 11:41:39 -0700
Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> That trash went away a llooonnnggg time ago. Good to be reminded, though,
> I'd forgotten how truly horrible it used to be, even in C.

	Try writing the declaration for an array of far pointers to
functions returning near pointers to arrays of far pointers to integers.

	Now do it without typedefs :)

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/

Someone will respond correctly to all following questions:

What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in machine code? 

For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in machine code?

2? 5?
 
What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in machine code? 

1%? 2%?

What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in Assembly? 

For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in Assembly?

4? 10?

What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in Assembly? 

2%? 4%?

On Thursday, April 26, 2018 at 7:23:07 PM UTC-4, man...@gmail.com wrote:

> Currently how many programmers coding in machine code? 

3.8234


> Currently how many programmers coding in Assembly? 

5.2761

<manh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Someone will respond correctly to all following questions:
> 
> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in machine code? 
> 
> For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in machine code?
> 
> 2? 5?
>  
> What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in machine code? 
> 
> 1%? 2%?
> 
> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in Assembly? 
> 
> For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in Assembly?
> 
> 4? 10?
> 
> What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in Assembly? 
> 
> 2%? 4%?
> 
> 

Yes, now are you happy?

-- 
Pete

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 11:41:39 -0700
> Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> That trash went away a llooonnnggg time ago. Good to be reminded, though,
>> I'd forgotten how truly horrible it used to be, even in C.
> 
> 	Try writing the declaration for an array of far pointers to
> functions returning near pointers to arrays of far pointers to integers.
> 
> 	Now do it without typedefs :)
> 

Actually, I think that would be clearer in assembler rather than use the
kludges grafted onto C to get it to work. From what (little) I know all
that "memory model" cr@p results from C assuming app pointers are one size.

-- 
Pete

manh...@gmail.com writes:

> Someone will respond correctly to all following questions:
>
> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding
> in machine code?
>
> For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in machine code?
>
> 2? 5?
>  
> What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in
> machine code?
>
> 1%? 2%?
>
> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding
> in Assembly?
>
> For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in Assembly?
>
> 4? 10?
>
> What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in
> Assembly?
>
> 2%? 4%?

Oh, you want a correct answer, not a guess.

Well then the correct answer is NOBODY KNOWS.

What makes you think anyone would know the answer to that question?

I'm retired now, but my last job was programming mostly in S/360
Assembler.

-- 
Dan Espen

On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 13:43:11 -0700, Peter Flass
<peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

><manh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Someone will respond correctly to all following questions:
>> 
>> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in machine code? 
>> 
>> For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in machine code?
>> 
>> 2? 5?
>>  
>> What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in machine code? 
>> 
>> 1%? 2%?
>> 
>> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding in Assembly? 
>> 
>> For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in Assembly?
>> 
>> 4? 10?
>> 
>> What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in Assembly? 
>> 
>> 2%? 4%?
>> 
>> 
>
>Yes, now are you happy?

Kill files work wonders. I've been thinking of putting the subject in
one to.

Em sexta-feira, 27 de abril de 2018 18:29:43 UTC-3, Dan Espen  escreveu:
> manh...@gmail.com writes:
> 
> > Someone will respond correctly to all following questions:
> >
> > What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding
> > in machine code?
> >
> > For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in machine code?
> >
> > 2? 5?
> >  
> > What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in
> > machine code?
> >
> > 1%? 2%?
> >
> > What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding
> > in Assembly?
> >
> > For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in Assembly?
> >
> > 4? 10?
> >
> > What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in
> > Assembly?
> >
> > 2%? 4%?
> 
> Oh, you want a correct answer, not a guess.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dan Espen

I accept guess.

On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 18:32:07 -0000 (UTC), John Levine <jo...@taugh.com> wrote:
> In article <pbvbrg$ee1$1...@dont-email.me>,
> Charles Richmond  <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
>>People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>>assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
>>say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
>>assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
>>logically devised instruction set.
>
> Having spent a certain amount of time coding for the minimal highly
> logical PDP-8, with an instruction set so small you could memorize it
> (including the binary values) I'll take the x86 any day.  What it may
> lack in symmetry it makes up in ability to get stuff done.

Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.

-- 
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
   - Douglas Adams

<manh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Em sexta-feira, 27 de abril de 2018 18:29:43 UTC-3, Dan Espen  escreveu:
>> manh...@gmail.com writes:
>> 
>>> Someone will respond correctly to all following questions:
>>> 
>>> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding
>>> in machine code?
>>> 
>>> For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in machine code?
>>> 
>>> 2? 5?
>>> 
>>> What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in
>>> machine code?
>>> 
>>> 1%? 2%?
>>> 
>>> What is the probable quantity of programmers that currently are coding
>>> in Assembly?
>>> 
>>> For example, only 1 programmer is currently coding in Assembly?
>>> 
>>> 4? 10?
>>> 
>>> What is the percentage of programmers that currently are coding in
>>> Assembly?
>>> 
>>> 2%? 4%?
>> 
>> Oh, you want a correct answer, not a guess.
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Dan Espen
> 
> I accept guess.
> 

"Alexa, what is the percentage of programmers..."



-- 
Pete

On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 04:37:30 -0500, Andy Leighton
<an...@azaal.plus.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 18:32:07 -0000 (UTC), John Levine <jo...@taugh.com> wrote:
>> In article <pbvbrg$ee1$1...@dont-email.me>,
>> Charles Richmond  <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
>>>People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>>>assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
>>>say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
>>>assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
>>>logically devised instruction set.
>>
>> Having spent a certain amount of time coding for the minimal highly
>> logical PDP-8, with an instruction set so small you could memorize it
>> (including the binary values) I'll take the x86 any day.  What it may
>> lack in symmetry it makes up in ability to get stuff done.
>
>Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
>the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.

I believe that you would have found moving to the IBM 3x0 was equally
painful.

On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 06:44:18 -0700
Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> "Alexa, what is the percentage of programmers..."

	Has anyone[1] tried to get a bunch of these things to talk to each
other ?

[1] It won't be me, I won't let any of them listen if I can help it.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/

On 28/04/2018 15:23, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 06:44:18 -0700
> Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> "Alexa, what is the percentage of programmers..."
> 
> 	Has anyone[1] tried to get a bunch of these things to talk to each
> other ?
> 
> [1] It won't be me, I won't let any of them listen if I can help it.
> 

Urban legend of an Alexa in the room responding to the requests made
to an Alexa in a TV advert?

On 4/28/2018 10:10 AM, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:
> On 28/04/2018 15:23, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 06:44:18 -0700
>> Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> "Alexa, what is the percentage of programmers..."
>>
>>     Has anyone[1] tried to get a bunch of these things to talk to each
>> other ?
>>
>> [1] It won't be me, I won't let any of them listen if I can help it.
>>
> 
> Urban legend of an Alexa in the room responding to the requests made
> to an Alexa in a TV advert?
> 

Texas kid asked Alexa for a dollhouse. The following news story had 
San Diego TV anchors kidding about the order. Reputedly 
dozens/hundreds of orders for dollhouses where Alexa heard the TV 
audio. Snopes says "unproven".

On Saturday, April 28, 2018 at 5:37:31 AM UTC-4, Andy Leighton wrote:

> Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
> the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.

Was it a problem to move from S/360 assembler to x86 assembler?

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:

> On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 06:44:18 -0700
> Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> "Alexa, what is the percentage of programmers..."
> 
> Has anyone[1] tried to get a bunch of these things to talk to each
> other ?

In 1972 Weizenbaum's Rogerian therapist ELIZA had an encouter with
Kenneth Colby's similarly designed schizophrenic, PARRY.

See RFC 439.

Isn't it about time for someone to write, perhaps using more up to
date algorithms, PRESIDENT?   By now, there's a suitably large  corpus
of  salad^H^H^H^H^H text out there on which to base it.

Or maybe I'm just too much of a troglodyte, don't get out enough, and
it already exists as a twitter bot?  PRESIDENT chats with LRM [42]?  As an
aside, if we want to get AI right, we may have to develop and get a
handle on AS (Artificial Stupidity) first.  


> [1] It won't be me, I won't let any of them listen if I can help it.


[42] Little Rocket Man


-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada

Mike Spencer wrote:

> if we want to get AI right, we may have to develop and get a
> handle on AS (Artificial Stupidity) first.
This may be something that will be quoted next to Moore's law some day in 
the future!

Jon

John Levine wrote:


> Having spent a certain amount of time coding for the minimal highly
> logical PDP-8, with an instruction set so small you could memorize it
> (including the binary values) I'll take the x86 any day.  What it may
> lack in symmetry it makes up in ability to get stuff done.
> 
The PDP-8 was a ghastly horror.  But, then, all 12-bit machines had to be so 
stripped down as to be pretty horrible.  They did about the best they could 
with just TWELVE bits to work with.

Jon

hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> On Saturday, April 28, 2018 at 5:37:31 AM UTC-4, Andy Leighton wrote:
> 
>> Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
>> the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.
> 
> Was it a problem to move from S/360 assembler to x86 assembler?
Likely.  The only thing old school on the 360 was it didn't implement 
stacks, and the OS and programming tools didn't generally push you in that 
direction.

The 360 had a really advanced instruction set for the time it was invented, 
which was about 1963.  A very orthogonal arrangement, no different classes 
of registers (most earlier machines had index registers and accumulators, 
and they were for entirely different purposes.)  The subroutine calling 
convention was a little old-school, the return address was placed (by 
convention) in register 14.  If you then called another subroutine without 
saving R14, you had no way back.  This often led to an infinite loop.  
Probably more CPU time was wasted with this mistake than all others 
combined.

The 360 had register to register operations, indexed storage to register, 
and storage to storage.  The indexed storage form had a base register which 
pointed to the beginning of your memory partition, an index register, and a 
12-bit offset in the instruction field.  This was VERY convenient for data 
structure operations (like the C construct struct).  The base register made 
it possible to have fully relocatable object programs, but once a program 
began to execute, it would save physical addresses (subroutine return 
locations and pointers to data) and so could not be moved to a different 
place in memory.

Jon

Jon Elson <el...@pico-systems.com> writes:
> The 360 had register to register operations, indexed storage to register, 
> and storage to storage.  The indexed storage form had a base register which 
> pointed to the beginning of your memory partition, an index register, and a 
> 12-bit offset in the instruction field.  This was VERY convenient for data 
> structure operations (like the C construct struct).  The base register made 
> it possible to have fully relocatable object programs, but once a program 
> began to execute, it would save physical addresses (subroutine return 
> locations and pointers to data) and so could not be moved to a different 
> place in memory.

and DOS/OS/360 executables had adcon convention that were swizzled to
fixed address when loaded into memory. this created all sorts of
problems when moving from real storage to segmented virtual
memory. TSS/360 (360/67) addressed this problem so there wasn't fixed
addresses somewhat randomly distributed thru executable i.e. resulted in
changed pages that had to be paged out to new locations and no longer
the same was the original executable image ... and also resulted in not
being able to share same executable image in different virtual address
spaces (at arbitrary different virtual address location).

I've complained periodically about the address constant convention when
I added virtual page-mapped filesystem support to cp67/cms (and then
migrated to vm370/cms). CMS had a bunch of native applications ... but
also made heavy use of lots of os/360 applications (including the
assemblers and compilers) with os/360 simulation ... that heavily used
the adcon executable convention.

past posts complaining about the adcon problem
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#adcon
past posts mentioning doing CMS page-mapped filesystem implementation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 11:45:27 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

>On Saturday, April 28, 2018 at 5:37:31 AM UTC-4, Andy Leighton wrote:
>
>> Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
>> the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.
>
>Was it a problem to move from S/360 assembler to x86 assembler?

I found the main problem making that move was the poor documentation
of the x86 instruction set and the cost of a decent assembler (tiny in
mainframe terms but large in '80s engineer paying out of pocket
terms).

Frome what I remember, and it has been a _long_ time, x86 segmentation
is a lot different conceptually from the base/offset addressing on the
3x0.

On 28/04/2018 20:33, J. Clarke wrote:
> 
> Frome what I remember, and it has been a _long_ time, x86 segmentation
> is a lot different conceptually from the base/offset addressing on the
> 3x0.

4 segment registers, CS, DS, SS, & ES.

Segement register multiplied by 16 and added to offset giving
20 bit (1 Mb) address

On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 11:45:27 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
> On Saturday, April 28, 2018 at 5:37:31 AM UTC-4, Andy Leighton wrote:
>
>> Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
>> the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.
>
> Was it a problem to move from S/360 assembler to x86 assembler?

I think the segmenting was a big problem for many programmers. M68000 was
more straight forward.
-- 
Andreas

My random toughts and comments
https://news-commentaries.blogspot.com/

Jon Elson <el...@pico-systems.com> writes:

> Mike Spencer wrote:
> 
>> if we want to get AI right, we may have to develop and get a
>> handle on AS (Artificial Stupidity) first.
>
> This may be something that will be quoted next to Moore's law some day in 
> the future!

Ah, cool.  I can look forward to another few milliWarhols [1] of fame,
should I live so long.

I had a nice little AS program working on a Osborne I, drawing from a
dBase II archive, partially based on the semantics of Tok Pisin, of
political/economic/etc. prounouncements, memes, slogans etc. circa
1990.  Very simplistic method of constructing new assertions of
convincing truthiness value.  Haven't got around to reconstructing it
since I've moved on to Linux.



[1] 1 mW == 15 min * 60 s/min / 1000 == 0.9 sec.  But you already knew that.

-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada

J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 04:37:30 -0500, Andy Leighton
> <an...@azaal.plus.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 18:32:07 -0000 (UTC), John Levine <jo...@taugh.com> wrote:
>>> In article <pbvbrg$ee1$1...@dont-email.me>,
>>> Charles Richmond  <nume...@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
>>>> People are even more discouraged from learning or using machine or 
>>>> assembly code by the *awful* instruction set of x86 processors.  So lets 
>>>> say that *fewer* people code in assembly language than would code in 
>>>> assembly language...  if the processor had a decent, reasonable, 
>>>> logically devised instruction set.
>>> 
>>> Having spent a certain amount of time coding for the minimal highly
>>> logical PDP-8, with an instruction set so small you could memorize it
>>> (including the binary values) I'll take the x86 any day.  What it may
>>> lack in symmetry it makes up in ability to get stuff done.
>> 
>> Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
>> the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.
> 
> I believe that you would have found moving to the IBM 3x0 was equally
> painful.
> 

Once you got passed the base/displacement addressing it was a pretty clean
instruction set.  Coming from machines that had direct addressing I found
it odd at first, and I suspect a lot of people started out doing strange
things with adcons and swapping bases.

-- 
Pete

Gareth's Downstairs Computer
<headstone255.but.n...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 28/04/2018 15:23, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 06:44:18 -0700
>> Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> "Alexa, what is the percentage of programmers..."
>> 
>> Has anyone[1] tried to get a bunch of these things to talk to each
>> other ?
>> 
>> [1] It won't be me, I won't let any of them listen if I can help it.
>> 
> 
> Urban legend of an Alexa in the room responding to the requests made
> to an Alexa in a TV advert?
> 

I'm not sure if they did this, but I read that Amazon did strange things
with voice frequencies to prevent this, maybe afterwards.

-- 
Pete

J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 11:45:27 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> 
>> On Saturday, April 28, 2018 at 5:37:31 AM UTC-4, Andy Leighton wrote:
>> 
>>> Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
>>> the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.
>> 
>> Was it a problem to move from S/360 assembler to x86 assembler?
> 
> I found the main problem making that move was the poor documentation
> of the x86 instruction set and the cost of a decent assembler (tiny in
> mainframe terms but large in '80s engineer paying out of pocket
> terms).
> 
> Frome what I remember, and it has been a _long_ time, x86 segmentation
> is a lot different conceptually from the base/offset addressing on the
> 3x0.
> 
> 

X86 segmentation is an ABOMINATION. 

-- 
Pete

On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 15:04:18 -0700, Peter Flass
<peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 11:45:27 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> 
>>> On Saturday, April 28, 2018 at 5:37:31 AM UTC-4, Andy Leighton wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Yeah but if you were familiar with 68000 assembly language then moving to
>>>> the 8086/88 (or successors) was painful.
>>> 
>>> Was it a problem to move from S/360 assembler to x86 assembler?
>> 
>> I found the main problem making that move was the poor documentation
>> of the x86 instruction set and the cost of a decent assembler (tiny in
>> mainframe terms but large in '80s engineer paying out of pocket
>> terms).
>> 
>> Frome what I remember, and it has been a _long_ time, x86 segmentation
>> is a lot different conceptually from the base/offset addressing on the
>> 3x0.
>> 
>> 
>
>X86 segmentation is an ABOMINATION. 

So how would _you_ make 8080 code run on a 16-bit processor that
didn't have enough clock cycles to make a soft emulator viable?

Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

> Has anyonetried to get a bunch of these things to talk to each
> other ?

It was 'popular' to set siri/alexa/google in a loop talking/listening to 
each other a year or two back...

<https://youtu.be/vmINGWsyWX0>

On Sat, 28 Apr 2018 15:04:18 -0700
Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> X86 segmentation is an ABOMINATION. 

	That good ?

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/