Wait, What

[afuna]

Spent the afternoon in the car with my mom running various errands and we got to talking. It turns out that mom was a systems programmer way back in the day of mainframes, and knows COBOL and assembly. And dad taught himself C in order to build a rudimentary inventory system (on a microcomputer? is that the thing?) -- this was for their first company, so late 80s/very early 90s.

I am floored. I was vaguely aware that she'd had a job involving computers and banks, but I did not realize the extent. Why did they not tell me this earlier? D:

(Note: Dad never taught me C; mom never taught me assembly. I wonder what would have happened if they had, though? I suspect murder and mayhem!)

Anyway, I found myself promising to teach her how to master excel -- or at least work it enough to run totals for her job. I suspect murder and mayhem! Whoo!

Comments

[pauamma]

Dad never taught me C

If his reference material are on a par with what you linked me to, I can kinda understand his reluctance. :-)

Also, C is nice, IMO. Assembly... well, some assembly languages are nice, some aren't. It depends on both the CPU design and the assembly syntax conventions. (and to some extent, how suited they are to your problem domain. Doing multiplication or division on a 8080 or Z80 is excruciatingly painful.)

[afuna]

*hands on hips, and sticks her tongue out at you* Hey, at least I didn't write that...!

C... I don't really remember it that well. I thnik I may have preferred C++, except for the whole dynamic lookup/multiple inheritance thing, which I haven't dug into in enough detail to see how it actually works.

I have (sadly?) not tried assembly! I've tried an assembly-ish language, for an ant behavior simulation, but nothing actually low-level enough to actually be poking at the CPU directly. *eyes thoughtfully*

[pauamma]

Assembly can be fun, if you don't need to fight the CPU and the syntax to do what you need. :-) (Tempting, me? Nah. What gave you that idea?)

[afuna]

*chin in hands*

So, how often do you manage to get to a point where you're not fighting the CPU or the syntax to do what you need? :-)

(*eyes you warily*)

[pauamma]

In assembly? Hmm, I haven't done any assembly programming in over 10 years, but I think I got to that point on an Intel 8051-based project.

[afuna]

Hummm. *notes for reference* Not that I know how/where to get started on a project, but ...

[pauamma]

Embedded programming is fun. :-) (Disclaimer: I would probably need to relearn a lot before I get back to that point.)

[afuna]

Mmm, and I would need to start from scratch. I guess we'll get there somehow :-)

[pauamma]

Indeed.