Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 18:37:25 -0400 From: "Steve Friedrich" <SteveFriedrich@Hot-Shot.com> To: "David Wolfskill" <dhw@whistle.com>, "grog@lemis.com" <grog@lemis.com> Cc: "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Assembly Language Documentation Message-ID: <199810202238.SAA24192@laker.net>
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On Tue, 20 Oct 1998 07:43:52 -0700 (PDT), David Wolfskill wrote: >>> Is any part of FreeBSD documented in assembly language? > >>I'm not sure if I understand you correctly. Assembly language is used >>for programming, not documntation. > >Given the 12 years I spent as an MVS (IBM mainframe) systems programmer, >I am forced to admit that I have a somewhat different perspective on >this: there are environments and contexts in which assembly code is >used to document such things as parameter lists and internal structures. According to Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, at one time, UNIX consisted of 13000 lines of system code, only about 800 lines at the very lowest level are in assembler. Much effort has been expended to keep the assembler code to it's absolute minimum. In short, if you're not a C programmer, you should become one if you want to read UNIX source for the kernel or utilities. In the case of *real* programmers (those who know a non-Microsoft, non-visual language), you should begin with "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie. The second edition is still current and is less than 275 pages. Unix systems measure "uptime" in years, Winblows measures it in minutes. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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