Re: A86: Re: Re: Assembly
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Re: A86: Re: Re: Assembly
Say it Dave! I hardly ever used rom calls until I started disassembling
them...
Going back to the original idea of changing the names of some of the
equates, I think it would be an alright idea for your own personal use.
But don't go spreading it around, everyone would get confused (or at
least annoyed). Ever had a look at the XC1701 source? A lot of the
ld's are replaced with mov's, which is not a whole lot of fun to read...
David Phillips wrote:
> If you can't write the code, you should't use it. I'm a firm believer in
> that. Write and understand have a very thin line, if that is what hangs you
> up. I'm not saying you shouldn't use the OpenGL drivers because you
> couldn't write fully optimized code like that. But if you don't understand
> the basics of 3D, then you have no business using a graphics API to write a
> 3D program. Same way with asm, or anything else. If you couldn't write the
> same FUNCTIONAL code, then you shouldn't use it, either.
>
> Btw, I use very few rom calls. People like to use them a whole lot.
> They're fine for normal programs, but if it's a game, I prefer to write them
> myselfm because they're a heck of a lot faster and because I can. If I
> couldn't have written it, I don't use it.
>
> > I feel that creating such a tool that would allow for easier functions
> > and commands, but still converting to asm would be a great idea as it
> > would not only introduce newbies to the power of assembly, but would also
> > give the experience asm programmer a way to create a fast solution to the
> > problem at hand. Giving them a program to work with and tweak.
>
> Introduce newbies to the power of assembly? You've played ZTetris and
> Sqrxz, right? Then you know the power of assembly. I have an idea.
> Seriously. Download David Boozer's "Hacking the TI-85". It was written in
> August of 1994 and can be found in ticalc.org's text archives. Then,
> download ZShell 1.0, found in the old 85 shells at ticalc.org. Read through
> the docs in that.
>
> Now tell me you need a tutorial to hold your hand through asm. Still not
> convinced? Read David Ellsworth's TI-85 and TI-92 bugs text file, found at
> ticalc.org in the text section. Very similiar to David Boozer's file.
>
> If you don't know asm, you aren't going to be able to write a compiler. Not
> possible at all. Even if you managed somehow to write one, anything it
> created would be awful. I'll admit, I wanted to do the EXACT same thing
> when I started. Then I decided to get off my butt and learn asm. Guess
> what? It's not so hard, fun and well worth it.
>
> Why do I feel so strongly about this? Maybe I'm a programming purist.
> Computers, to the state that they have evolved, are very poor, at least in
> software quality. Sure, there's quality. Load up VC++, push a few buttons
> and you have a full featured text editor. Darn, that took a lot of effort.
> And do you know it works? No. Do you know why? Of course you don't. All
> you know is that your computer that is 100 or more times faster than that
> 8088 you had when you were in gradeschool boots up slower and crashes more
> often. You have more hard drive space than was imaginable 20 years ago, and
> it's full of worthless, slow, buggy crap.
>
> Now, you have a almost-perfectly designed Z80 machine with 128k ram (so it
> has a few quirks, has to be a challenge somewhere :) and are graced with a
> full host of development tools, emulators and documentation, allowing you to
> easily and fully enjoy programming it in assembly, and you want to go and
> screw it up by writing a compiler?
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