On 9/17/2010 1:13 PM, phaeton wrote:
> On Sep 17, 7:50 am, "Nancy > wrote:
>> Krypsis wrote:
>>> Back in pre-computer days, usage of the different number bases would
>>> seem odd. These days however, with the advent of computers,
>>> Hexadecimal, Octal& Binary do indeed serve a purpose in mathematics.
>>> I have a friend who can program in Direct Hexadecimal because he has
>>> ALL the codes memorised.
>>
>> That's the first language I learned, machine code. Tedious, but very
>> handy to understand later if you were a mainframe programmer. I
>> have no idea if it's still useful in the pc age.
>>
>> nancy
>
> Some people still code on the bare metal. For consumer PCs, not so
> much. But for things like microcontrollers and FFGPAs and small
> processors for which no higher-level compiler is written you'll see
> people writing in assembler. I haven't studied assembler much, but my
> guess is that it has a huge learning curve, but once you are past that
> it makes incredible sense as it is down at the level where hardware
> and software blur.

It's mostly a pain in the butt. Note that "assembler" is specific to a
processor or family of processors--System/390 assembler is not the same
as x86 assembler which is not the same as ARM assembler and so on. If
you're programming in assembler you're becoming very specialized.

> "I'm flipping these bits and turning transistor
> arrays on and off" kinda stuff. In the Atmel controllers, for
> instance, you still code in C, but there is a lot of poke/peek stuff
> at hardware addresses which are assigned in hexidecimal, so it
> sometimes feels like assembly language.
>
> In the PC world, the trend is going up to higher and higher level
> languages. C and C++ for system-level and major application stuff,
> and interpreted languages (Java, Perl, and whatever flavor of the
> month prototyping language) is getting more and more common for
> smaller apps and 'glue'.
>
> -J