[Novalug] Historical Assembly, was: Wii iiiiii !!!!!!!

[Ed T. Toton III]

Thus spake James Ewing Cottrell 3rd:

> I/O Ports and instructions are Bogus! DEC showed us the way with Memory 
> Mapped I/O.
>
> Those stupid segment registers were bogus compared to a real memory 
> management unit, and spawned the abomination of near and far pointers.
>
> Iused to write assembly language on Intel 8085 (also Z80) and Motorola 
> 6809 processors. Intel was a Pain , the 6809 a Joy.


I think some of it also has to do with what platform you're exposed to 
first. I used to enjoy x86 assembly, since most of it made good sense to 
me. However you're certainly right, the near/far stuff was a pain. But it 
all evolved out of backward compatability with the earlier x86 CPUs. 
Following the evolution of it, it becomes more understandable.

I did however like the simplicity of much of the instruction set and the 
fact that registers are named for what they do. I liked the atomic nature 
of it.

I know this can spark another holy war, but I didn't much care for VAX 
assembly, in contrast. There was no mnemonic for register functions (just 
r0..r15), and instructions could have 5 or 6 operands. Messy, in my mind.


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  Ed T. Toton III -- http://necrobones.com/ - http://ed.toton.org/
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