RE: Introduction & Question

Well, I think only in my novice eyes, do I perceive it as a mess. Im
sure Owen understand the Matrix just fine too. :-)

Jess
"cause Im the man on the outside looking in" - Pink Floyd

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-vectorlist@vectorlist.org
[mailto:owner-vectorlist@vectorlist.org] On Behalf Of Neil Bradley
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 1:39 AM
To: vectorlist@vectorlist.org
Subject: RE: VECTOR: Introduction & Question

> In the Major Havoc source (6502 Assembler, not C in 1981-1983), the
> code is a crazy hot mess (respectfully of course!).

How 'bout I forward this on to Owen? He'd get a kick out of it. ;-)

> It is sort of funny because when I was a teenager, I learned
> everything in Assembly Language (hurray for global variables!) and
> Object Oriented Programming always seemed like a mysterious
> 'backwards' way of doing things. Now that I have been doing OOP for
> 12+ years,

I think a lot of people forget that doing OOP != C++/Java, etc... (i.e.
"C++ Is just C with classes and variables defined wherever!") Object
oriented programming is a design/implementation methodology, not a
language. Sad that so many <10 year graduates don't know that, but I
guess that's what you get when universities are chasing programming
fads. You can do OO in assembly. It's all in how everything is
organized.

> looking back on
> the raw assembly language, I can't even comprehend how to prevent a
> litany of bugs due to overlapping memory blocks, bad offsets or scope
> clobbering for temp variables.... whoa Nellie, it is a totally
> different way of looking at things and not a fun set procedures to try

> and track down problems.

Not as bad as it sounds. I co-authored >1MB of 8051 assembly language
for an OS for a Roland Jupiter 6 and you basically have your support
routines use dedicated globals. Just set up a set of rules for how you
use registers and memory locations and avoid using them for the wrong
purpose.
But as soon as you add in multiple people, I can see it getting ugly
fast.

> We all have mostly lived in both worlds... it will be interesting to
> see how the younger generation of programmers deal with that old code
> someday! I wonder if they even will? It may be a lost art at this
> point ehh?

<rant>
Oh, no, didn't you hear? Pointers are too hard. That's why Java
eliminated them. Just let the garbage collection routines work in the
background and suck up additional CPU power when you don't want it to.
Don't pay any attention to what's going on under the hood.

Why yes, I just was handed a C++ program that had several modules
exceeding 10,000 lines of code, with procedures >3K. Why do you ask? ;-(
I also was asked if we could add a JVM to our embedded system. And no,
it didn't occur to them that it would exceed the available flash space.

Lost art indeed, Jess. I swear that if we forced everyone to work in an
assembly language boot camp before giving them a high level language,
we'd have 90% less programmers out there. I often get disgusted by the
thought of how much extra CPU and electricity is used up by all the CPU
burned by bloatware and interpreted languages (I'm looking at you PHP
and JVMs) </rant>

I guess on the flip side, it just means job security for us embedded
systems guys. And yes, I'm grizzled. Now get off my lawn... ;-)

-->Neil

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----
C. Neil Bradley - Excessive process falsely elevates the incapable and
ties
                   the hands of the exceptional.
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