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Darkus
Registered: Apr 2007
Posts: 8 |
Coding for beginners
I`ve been searching the net for assembler guides and applications but I hoping someone can recommend the best guides and programs I should use for starting out - plus are there any issues with using emulators only ? Anyone who may answer these questions, please bare in mind I know very little about the C64 platform at this stage :) |
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Danzig
Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 440 |
speaking of 8bit-machine code especially 6502 you can easily reach simple goals with a monitor. the crest-demomaker is s-mon ;)
but take into consideration: development speed... using a crossdev-toolchain is the way to go nowadays. i recomment kickassembler by any means, roxxor!
people still inserting commands in a 4k codeblock by transfering the code and then relocating the beast from the necessary position forward deserve empathy :D
also turboassembler (the c64-version ;) ) was a powerful companion in the 80/90s but fucked up sourcecode can nowadays easily be avoided ;) and using it in an emulator is just pain in teh 4rs3.
tons of different files on one disk each loaded separatly to test or just using ".incbin"s and get ONE resulting file... hm... your choice *G*
and, speaking about tool-chains in general, I just start the "making" and the result is a fully linked, crunched and .d64ed file... autostarting in an emulator (f.e. x64)...
pardon, but this discussion is useless in 2008...
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
When writing tutorials for beginners there really shouldn't be any question; assemblers and particularly cross assemblers make it possible to worry about learning code without having to learn everything at once; working in a monitor requires learning hex, understanding how bits in a byte represent numbers and a number (s'cuse the pun) at the same time as learning 6502 itself. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
Quote:
working in a monitor requires learning hex, understanding how bits in a byte represent numbers and a number (s'cuse the pun) at the same time as learning 6502 itself.
uhm pardon but, if you cant take the hour to learn hex and bits and bytes (numbersystems such as sedecimal are primary school stuff btw) - forget about programming alltogether.
i would actually recommend playing around in a monitor aswell, atleast for a start, and especially to get familiar with the bits and bytes and all that junk.
ofcourse, once you have made a few trivial programs, you should move on to an assembler.
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
It's almost like a game, if you don't keep someone's attention at the start they don't get over the first level; that's why my preference is to get people playing with opcodes and actually moving something onscreen (even inc $0400 or inc $d020 for an absolute starting point) and then introduce hex and how bits represent numbers. Actually getting a result onscreen for their effort more often than not hooks people in when just talking about different number bases for "chapter 1" doesn't.
Essentially that's how i learnt too, using an assembler that accepted decimal numbers and not dealing with hex straight away; i've still got mot of the source for my first real game and that's nearly all in decimal. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
again: numbersystems are primary school material. i learned about binary and hex (and octal =P) in 4th grade primary school atleast, and so should have most other people.
and seeing sources with 53280 instead of $d020 make me shudder really.
no really. learn the basics first, not somewhere along the way. if thats too much for your attention span...oh well. forget programming. you'll give up at the next roadblock anyway =P |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5094 |
I have vague memories about "learning" number systems in primary school. I also remember not understanding it at all, just memorizing some processes.
I dont think majority learned hex 2's and stuff before anything else, rather the other way around. Its not crucial for anything anyway. |
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Danzig
Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 440 |
I remember my computer & math teacher claiming its impossible to convert hex to dec, bin, oct and via verca without writing the "way" down!!!
it was an exam, i just had the answers but had not written the solution on the paper.
he claimed i peeked my classmates. i said: ok, that guy was on the seat infront of mine and that guy behind me. check their answers, they are all WRONG. Finally he told me nobody except of me had the right answers but still claimed I peeked.
so i offered him to test me on the board. he shall write random numbers from the "numbersystems" and i will solve the corresponding systems. ofcourse he said: we have no time for this. and my points were still STOLEN!
this is now 18 years ago... but i still spray hex/bin/oct-numbers on the walls of his house each sylvester night ever since... ok, just joking *G*
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
haha lol, i remember similar things :) teacher couldnt believe that i knew 2^16=65536 =) |
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Conjuror
Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 168 |
My lecturer at college was getting the students to do the 2^x, I took over after 2^8 and went to 2^16. They all looked at me like I was a freak. All from memory of course.
Steve
Conjuror/TF
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Martin Piper
Registered: Nov 2007
Posts: 722 |
Being able to mentally convert bases, especially decimal to binary or hex, is very useful while coding low level languages. I've been disappointed by the number of times I've interviewed job applicants for programming positions and found they couldn't convert the hex numbers in programming tests or understand the concept of bit masks. |
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