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• Thursday, September 14, 2006 03:37 PM

  Coding in Assembler

  OMG, already over 200 posts. Well maybe someone will see this.

  *sigh*

  I earned my bachelor's degree in math with a minor in computer science in 1998.

  In one of the CS classes I took, we studied assembler coding. We had an assignment to write a small piece of code in assembler. We were given multiple options of assembler compilers to use.

  And we couldn't get a single one to work. NASM, TASM, I don't remember what else. And none of them worked. The instructor had to cancel the assignment, because we couldn't compile our code to test it.

  I managed to come up with a copy of MASM, MicroSoft's assembler compiler. I was able to get it to work, and was therefore one of 3 students who completed the assignment successfully. But it wasn't a commercially available compiler, it was one I "borrowed" from a classmate. In other words, 8 years ago, actual CS students in college didn't have access to low-level coding tools.

  After graduation, I went to work for a software company. Our two main goals with any new release were: 1) that the install worked properly; and 2) that we didn't break any old features that had worked previously. New features that worked properly were a plus, but not required.

  I taught myself BASIC programming in high school in the 70s. Those people just aren't graduating from college these days.

  —farnsworth
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