[ale] hex

[Benjamin Scherrey]

On Friday 11 May 2001 12:45 pm, Irv Mullins wrote:
> Hmmm. on the off chance that this isn't a troll.....
> People very rarely program in 'hex'.
> I quit once computers got more than 256 bytes of memory..
<snip>

	I recall the Apple ][ having a hex/asm mode you could code in. Wrote quite a 
bit of code under that environment which was little more than hex. Wouldn't 
want to do that under any of the new x86 processors. Too many varients in the 
same opcode. Could probably do it with some of the Motorola or RISC cpus, 
however. I did write a mini-FORTH interpreter for the Hero-1 robot in 6809 
hex (cause all you had was a hex pad for entry).

> You should also be aware that changing even one single
> byte in those 11,000 will cause the program to cease working.
> So, I can't really recommend you try editing Notepad :)

	Indeed, how many of us used to type in those four page hex listings from 
computer magazines in the early 80s? One typo and it went nowhere! I still 
can't believe I used to spend all day in class writing 6502 ASM source code 
in freehand (instead of doing my work) then going to the local computer lab 
and typing it all in. Sometimes it even worked! :-) Talk about learning the 
benifits of code organization the hard way!

	Gee - consider the orders of magnitude of overhead we sustain now for 
acomplishing the same basic functionality. Now think how much bigger its 
gonna be the acomplish the next step in "ease of use".... I shudder.

	later,

		Ben Scherrey
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