From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-09-28T15:50:07+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Confession: I never did ASM

John Joyce wrote:
> 
> 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)
> 
> 
Ah ... yes ... the Priess book is junk, even the clean and "published" 
versions. The Ruby version is a tad worse than the originals.