Skip Montanaro <skip.montan...@gmail.com> writes: >> >> Machine language is so much simpler, and you can code with just a hexpad. >> > > Pshaa... All you need are front panel switches. ;-) (Yes, I had a professor > who required is to 'key' in our programs on the front panel, of a rack > mounted PDP-11 as I recall. Needless to say, we didn't use an assembler > either. We just wrote raw opcodes and their arguments on paper. This was in > the late 70s.)
That's right about whn I had to do that for one assignment (on a Nova). Hand-assembling, toggling in, and debugging a program on the front panel was a valuable learning exercise. Doing it a second time wouldn't have been helpful... One nice thing was the computer had core memory, and the students made an agreement as to who got which part. You could work for a while, shut the machine down, come back the next day, power it up, and your program would still be there. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
