From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-09-28T14:21:37+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Confession: I never did ASM


On Sep 27, 2007, at 11:01 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> John Joyce wrote:
>> On Sep 27, 2007, at 1:21 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>>> julik wrote:
>>>> I would love to join the recently started confession fest.
>>>>
>>>> I've got a similar problem as Jay, but in a totally different  
>>>> domain.
>>>> Having started as a script kiddo - what kind of book can  
>>>> introduce me in
>>>> the beautiful but-oh-so-scary world of things like bit shifts,  
>>>> number
>>>> representations, registers and that 0xF of them all, so that I  
>>>> can (not
>>>> too urgently) start in C with at least some level of self- 
>>>> confidence and
>>>> understanding?
>>>>
>>>> Is there some kind of book like "Everything you should know  
>>>> about the
>>>> Von Neumann machine to get by unscathed without brain damage" or  
>>>> so?
>>>> Except Donald Knuth because I also have a day job to fulfill :-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Straight from the horse's mouth:
>>>
>>> http://www.cs.unc.edu/~adyilie/comp265/vonNeumann.html
>>>
>>> :) :) :)
>>>
>>> And no, I never met Von Neumann but I *did* write software for an
>>> original Von Neumann machine -- ILLIAC I :).
>>>
>> WOW, that's some classically fluffed up academic writing...
>
> You *did* see the date, right? Von Neumann died in 1957. That  
> paper, as well known as it is, was pretty tough to track down in  
> HTML. Remember, he was a theoretical and applied mathematician for  
> decades before he turned to "computer engineering". If you think  
> it's "classically fluffed up academic writing," you ought to see  
> some of his papers on Hilbert spaces. :)
>
> There was actually a second paper on programming the machine, which  
> is even harder to find. I have a printed copy somewhere, but I  
> haven't found it on line yet.
>
Sorry Ed, think we crossed wires. I was talking about the Priess  
piece somebody posted a link to earlier. The guy "translated" his  
"web book" (think 1993 web sites) to 8 or 9 programming languages,  
but it all seems rooted in C++ so it just doesn't make sense with  
Ruby (let alone most of the others)