another bizarre architecture
in [Embedded]
|
From: Jim Granville on 5 Feb 2007 16:05 werty wrote: > Gov'ts subsidize , so they dont need to compete , > so they make errors . > But the world has ARM competition , forcing ARM to > give more performance , thus ARM will beat out > all mcu/cpu in the next 4 years . > MicroChip-PIC , Zilog , Intel , will all be history . > Im not saying i approve , im saying its way too powerful > for any detours or surprises . > so if you talk 8051 or PIC , you wont have anyone > to talk to , in the future . hmmm.... <Snip> > Anyone interested in joining ? Start a page somewhere and post some examples of this doing some real work. Here is a good example, of a new language that is very well presented on the web : http://myhdl.jandecaluwe.com/doku.php/cookbook:intro Get your language support pages to that standard, and you will have no problems getting others to join. > for starts . ill call it ForthRite ( a forth right method ). A google for ForthRite finds over 1600 hits, so you might want to choose another name with less conflict ? > If it is tiny , elegant , highly structured and intuitive , > it may have a place in ForthRite ......and free to the public. > Since it has only images , it will be self Documenting . ? Images - you mean pictures or icons ? That dictates custom files/hw, and seems a step back from text files -jg
From: John Larkin on 5 Feb 2007 16:06 On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:32:28 GMT, Vladimir Vassilevsky <antispam_bogus(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >I have seen the comments like "I don't know why, but this variable >should be set to 1, otherwise it doesn't work..." That seems like a very valuable comment to me. It alerts future programmers that there may be a problem somewhere. Even worse would be if the situation went undocumented. We sometimes write a comment like "this chip seems to need a wait after loading the control register. 1 millisecond seems to work, so we used three just for luck." John
From: Rich Grise on 5 Feb 2007 17:44 On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 13:06:49 -0800, John Larkin wrote: > On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:32:28 GMT, Vladimir Vassilevsky > >>I have seen the comments like "I don't know why, but this variable >>should be set to 1, otherwise it doesn't work..." > > That seems like a very valuable comment to me. It alerts future > programmers that there may be a problem somewhere. Even worse would be > if the situation went undocumented. > > We sometimes write a comment like "this chip seems to need a wait > after loading the control register. 1 millisecond seems to work, so we > used three just for luck." So, when's the book, "How To Write Understandable and Maintainable Code" coming out? ;-) Cheers! Rich
From: Ken Smith on 5 Feb 2007 22:25 In article <pan.2007.02.05.18.12.44.328675(a)example.net>, Rich Grise <rich(a)example.net> wrote: [....] >The worst are comments that don't tell you anything, usually caused by >some supervisor ordering a bunch of code grunts, "Your code WILL be >commented!" and you get this: > >LABEL1: MOV BP,SP ; move the contents of the stack pointer to the base > ; pointer register Many years ago, a friend of mine made a nice little joke program. You could feed uncommented code into it and it would produce code with very nice comments. It would look at two instructions and look up phrases based on them and the random number generator. You knew you were in trouble when they seemed to be making sense. -- -- kensmith(a)rahul.net forging knowledge
From: John Larkin on 5 Feb 2007 22:57
On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:04:43 GMT, Rich Grise <rich(a)example.net> wrote: >On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:37:05 -0500, Robert Adsett wrote: > >> Indeed, especially since some people have been known to produce >> functions that look like the standard functions but are either >> incomplete or behave slightly differently. (maybe we can call those >> homonym functions?) > >In C++, that's called "Overloading". > >If John thinks plain ol' C is "ugly", we should protect him from ever >seeing any C++ - He'd get apoplexy! ;-) > >I disagree that C is "ugly", but as they say, "de gustibus non disputandum >est." (no accounting for taste.) :-) > >But, even though there are uglier languages, I can see John's point - >from a hardware/assembly-level guy's POV, the 68xxx have always been >very pleasant to work with. I don't know exactly where it goes on the >"prettiness" scale, however. :-) > >Cheers! >Rich The PDP-11 was stunningly beautiful in its cleanliness and symmetry. The preferred radix was octal, and the instruction set and addressing modes fit perfectly into octal digits. I can still assemble a bit from memory... 123722 = add byte, source absolute address, destination indirect register 2, autoincrement Its instruction set was the basis for C. 68K has more registers and is a 32-bit machine, but is less orthogonal and nothing you can easily assemble from memory. Only its MOVE instruction has the source/destination symmetry that nearly all PDP-11 opcodes had. John |