On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:30:35 -0400, John W Kennedy wrote: > I said "machine language" and I meant it. > OK - I haven't touched that since typing ALTER commands into the console of a 1903 running the UDAS executive or, even better, patching the executive on the hand switches.
I was fascinated, though by the designs of early assemblers: I first learnt Elliott assembler, which required the op codes to be typed on octal but used symbolic labels and variable names. Meanwhile a colleague had started on a KDF6 which was the opposite - op codes were mnemonics but all addresses were absolute and entered in octal. I always wondered about the rationale of the KDF6 assembler writers in tackling only the easy part of the job. > Even shops that used assembler nevertheless frequently did bug fixes as > machine-language patches, rather than take the time to run the assembler > again. (SPS, the non-macro basic assembler, ran at about 70 lines a > minute, tops.) > Even a steam powered 1901 (3.6 uS for a half-word add IIRC) running a tape based assembler was faster than that. It could just about keep up with a 300 cpm card reader. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org | -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
