How Machine Language Works

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[Sladen]

Learning machine language with the 8-bit guy over a couple hours sounds like fun to me.

[jaymartinmobile]

Back in '81-'83 I used to teach a few "introductory to computer programming" courses as part of my job repairing the computers of the time (mostly C64 and VIC-20). I was teaching the basics of BASIC to a class when one student asked me to explain ML. I gave a few examples very similar to yours to try to show the similarities and differences. The next question was "why write in ML when BASIC was so readable?" I then wrote a program to poke a character to all screen locations and then poke the next character etc. in both ML and BASIC. Showing the speed difference and explaining why made for a very good class, with most students signing up for the next level course. Thanks for the memories.

[neodimium]

In my college we used to program ATMEL MCU in assembler. That was in 2000 and I remember it as great time. Working directly with addresses and limited operations pushed us to be more creative than ever.
I would gladly start that class again!

[BixbyConsequence]

Wrote a puzzle-solving program for TRS-80. Initial run in BASIC was 48 hours. Took it down to about 12 hours with heavy optimizing. I broke down and rewrote in Z-80 assembler and got solutions in 4 minutes.

[ThatEEguy]

Assembly really does give a person a good grasp of how a computer processor works. Even if it's outdated, it's still worth learning.

[pilotkid]

As someone who has taken 3 assembly language classes in college, I must say this was an EXCELLENT overview.

[JHMBB]

I feel like I walked into the wrong class in college and was too confused and embarrassed to leave.

[tompov]

i feel like this is just a 20 minute PSA of david saying “STOP ASKING ME TO PORT Petscii robots” understandable honestly

[ossietee]

This is the best technical video/ lecture I’ve attended in ages. Seriously!
I am a retired CHEM prof, aged 79+ who was working on Data acquisition, in my research, on Sabbatical in California.
I bought my first Apple ll in 1979 with my own money, $1500, and taught myself to use it.
A bit later, I wrote in 6502 machine language to convert data in BCD to Hex to do graphics on the Apple ll prior to doing Data analysis.

[stmchale]

I liked the scene you pointed out from "The Terminator" movie. I saw this in the theaters in 84' in Dallas and I was with my brother who just graduated from college as a Electrical Engineer and during that scene he whispered to me "that is assembly language", I whispered back. "Your telling me there going to use assembly language 50 years from now"? Well, here we are now.

[binixx]

1:15 "I'm not gonna teach you how to code in machine language because that will probably take like 10 hours"
Where do i sign?

[janhruby]

FYI: C# is same as Java they are compiled to bytecode and then JITed to machine code.

[retep]

Ben Eater recently (past year) did a series on assembling and programming a 6502 computer to say hello world. Worth checking out if you like this sort of thing.

[austinpatkos]

Dude it's insane how much he actually knows and how talented he really is.

[lemagreengreen]

The whole explanation of the CPU simply viewing other chips as memory is great and really demystifies a lot of this stuff.

[MikeBramm]

Without a memory map of the hardware, you end up having to reverse engineer the board to determine out what addresses control which hardware (through address decoders to chip select or enable inputs). If you're lucky, you can get a schematic, otherwise you'll spend A LOT of time following traces, making your own schematic and downloading data sheets.

[leviwuzere]

Holy hell, that cleanly, clearly, quickly and distinctly explained quite a lot about Assembly languages that I've been struggling to figure out for months as I'm interested in learning about how old computers worked as a modern programmer

Excellent video

[herrbonk]

15:10 Intel and Zilog assembly used a suffixed "h" (F143h). So the notation 0xF143 wasn't common at all in 8088 assembly. It comes from C and has creeped into the x86 world via the C-based Unix/Linux in later years.

[mikesimms]

As someone who has written assembly professional (fairly recently, I might add), I still think there's some value in it. Mostly because it helps you understand computer architecture at a level you're not going to get from the perspective of a high level language.

[shrekinabox]

His new setup looks like he's in heaven