On 29Jul2015 10:51, random...@fastmail.us <random...@fastmail.us> wrote:
On Sun, Jul 26, 2015, at 07:48, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
At first, there was only the machine language. Assembly languages
introduced "mnemonics" for the weaklings who couldn't remember the
opcodes by heart.
To be fair, x86 is also a particularly terrible example of a machine
language, from the perspective of someone imagining being expected to
memorize it. Compare it with PDP-11, which had eight registers and eight
addressing modes and a whole lot less to memorize (since each of these
appears in every instruction as a single octal digit).
16 registers - you forget the alternate register set.
Since the UNIX V7 kernel code never made use of them we used to use them as a
crude messaging system from user space, as what you put there sayed there,
globally accessible by other users.
Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>
TeX: When you pronounce it correctly to your computer, the terminal may
become slightly moist. - D. E. Knuth.
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