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A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

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Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#31

Post by gaius »

psquid wrote: post #30
gaius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do all my "fun" computing these days on a BBC Micro, in assembly language. I don't have total understanding of the ICs, it's true. But in its 64k of addressable memory (32k RAM), I've a pretty good idea of where everything is and what happens when. Very satisfying.

Any idea where someone (such as me) born too late to have an original Micro might be able to get hold of one?

If you're in the UK, there's a liquid market in BBCs, C64s and similar on eBay. There are a few sellers who refurb them (e.g. new power supplies, cleaned up cases etc). You can easily adapt a BBC to use SCART too (the lead will cost about a fiver) and use it on a modern TV, if you don't fancy using a big old CUB monitor.

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#32

Post by JulianMorrison »

DodgyEggplant wrote: post #12

as usual, it's already written in the bible: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LordPalmerston.html "There was a time when if you read one book by Peter Norton, you literally knew everything there was to know about programming the IBM-PC"

That's mainly because DOS couldn't do anything. If you want to reproduce the capabilities of DOS - single tasking, single threading file and screen IO in text or simple non-windowed graphics - you really wouldn't need to learn much more nowadays.

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#33

Post by eterps »

bwarp wrote: post #27

A complete understanding if you ask me is one which requires no impenetrable "black-box abstractions" to be substituted in the abstraction hierarchy. In the case of a CPU, you would have to have a full gate level understanding of it and an understanding of how the gates operate. To be honest, the "complete understanding" died way before the original post. It was the moment that they started building computers with in…

Will the game be changed once again when 3D printers will be able to print circuits?

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#34

Post by haraldk »

In our society, my take on this is that one shouldn't try to understand everything. We get smarter as a whole if different individuals focus on different areas. I'm not saying no one should collaborate, but 6 billion jack-of-all-trades, master-of-nothing simply is not smart enough to care for the next billion.

Read "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr, it discuss this very topic. Humanity had the the same discussion when the printing press became normal. People could start to look up things in books instead of remembering everything (analogy: you're searching the interwebs).

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#35

Post by gaius »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #32
DodgyEggplant wrote: post #12

as usual, it's already written in the bible: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LordPalmerston.html "There was a time when if you read one book by Peter Norton, you literally knew everything there was to know about programming the IBM-PC"

That's mainly because DOS couldn't do anything. If you want to reproduce the capabilities of DOS - single tasking, single threading file and screen IO in text or simple non-windowed graphics - you really wouldn't need to learn much more nowadays.

A lot of people did a lot of real work on DOS (or CP/M, or whatever) systems. And they knew a lot more than today's Ruby On Rail For Dummies crowd.

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#36

Post by jgw »

gaius wrote: post #29
bwarp wrote: post #27

A complete understanding if you ask me is one which requires no impenetrable "black-box abstractions" to be substituted in the abstraction hierarchy. In the case of a CPU, you would have to have a full gate level understanding of it and an understanding of how the gates operate. To be honest, the "complete understanding" died way before the original post. It was the moment that they started building computers with in…

I do all my "fun" computing these days on a BBC Micro, in assembly language. I don't have total understanding of the ICs, it's true. But in its 64k of addressable memory (32k RAM), I've a pretty good idea of where everything is and what happens when. Very satisfying.

Very cool. I still have the old Osborne 1 on which I learned to program.

Interesting historical point - the BBC Micro was designed by Acorn Computers, who are the parent of the ARM processors that are so ubiquitous today.

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#37

Post by eterps »

eterps wrote: post #2

That's why we need systems to be more like this: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf

And even though the STEPS project above is about software, The Elements of Computing Systems [ http://amzn.to/xMTkWX ] proves that hardware can be understandable as well. Of course that architecture is far too simple to be useful today, but there are still a lot of opportunities that we are missing today: http://bit.ly/ySQf25

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#38

Post by gaius »

jgw wrote: post #36
gaius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do all my "fun" computing these days on a BBC Micro, in assembly language. I don't have total understanding of the ICs, it's true. But in its 64k of addressable memory (32k RAM), I've a pretty good idea of where everything is and what happens when. Very satisfying.

Very cool. I still have the old Osborne 1 on which I learned to program. Interesting historical point - the BBC Micro was designed by Acorn Computers, who are the parent of the ARM processors that are so ubiquitous today.

Indeed, the original ARM was designed on a BBC Micro + 6502 Co-Pro. Amazing what "real work" you can get done on one :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#History

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#39

Post by bwarp »

gaius wrote: post #29
bwarp wrote: post #27

A complete understanding if you ask me is one which requires no impenetrable "black-box abstractions" to be substituted in the abstraction hierarchy. In the case of a CPU, you would have to have a full gate level understanding of it and an understanding of how the gates operate. To be honest, the "complete understanding" died way before the original post. It was the moment that they started building computers with in…

I do all my "fun" computing these days on a BBC Micro, in assembly language. I don't have total understanding of the ICs, it's true. But in its 64k of addressable memory (32k RAM), I've a pretty good idea of where everything is and what happens when. Very satisfying.

Good for you!

I (the parent of your post) actually have a BBC Master (and the advanced reference manuals) lying around still for precisely that reason. It's quite a handy and very powerful little machine to be honest.

It even runs LISP (AcornSoft LISP).

Re: A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible

#40

Post by bwarp »

gaius wrote: post #38
jgw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cool. I still have the old Osborne 1 on which I learned to program. Interesting historical point - the BBC Micro was designed by Acorn Computers, who are the parent of the ARM processors that are so ubiquitous today.

Indeed, the original ARM was designed on a BBC Micro + 6502 Co-Pro. Amazing what "real work" you can get done on one :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#History

I was the proud owner of an ARM copro [1] many years ago (I still have the Master it was plugged into) and the first Acorn RISC machine (an A310 with 512k RAM if I remember correctly).

They were and still are extremely powerful and productive machines.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro_expansion_unit#ARM_Ev...

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