• @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    64 months ago

    I wouldn’t be able to write Rollercoaster Tycoon in assembly because keeping track of all that code in assembly files must be hell, but people pretending like you need to be some kind of wizard to write assembly code are exaggerating.

    Well, they’ve got a point for the bigger machine codes. Just the barebones specification for x86 is a doorstopper IIRC.

    From what I’ve heard, writing big stuff in assembly comes down to play-acting the compiler yourself on paper, essentially.

      • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        4 months ago

        TIL. I had tried to understand it a bit, but felt lost pretty fast, and then eventually found out that’s because it’s huge. Is there a good intro to the basic instructions you’re aware of?

        By “play act the compiler” I mean a fairly elaborate system of written notes that significantly exceeds the size of the actual program. Like, it’s no wonder they started thinking about building machine compilers at that stage.

      • @luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
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        14 months ago

        What language is your pseudocode example modeled after? It vaguely reminds me of some iOs App code I helped debug (Swift?) but I never really learned the language so much as eyeballed it with educated guesses, and even with the few things I double checked it has been a few years, so I have no clue what is or isn’t legal syntax anymore.

          • @luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
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            14 months ago

            I’ve heard of Kotlin in the context of Android apps, but never actually used or learned it. I did one mobile app dev project with Java in Android Studio, but never had any formal classes on it either and just learned as I went (the result was shit, but we got a decent grade for being able to evaluate the difficulties and shortcomings and point out learnings).