Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic writes:

My error on "real", Adam meant the old cliche "real programmers use assembler". I apologize, I thought Adam was asserting that vintage computing wasn't real when compared to day-job computing.

Well, according to the book at least, they don't use Pascal! ;)

As for my 'dissing emulators. I have my priorities too: I'm preserving hardware, because emulators make it easy to throw 'em out! And for "circumstantial" reasons: my nuts-and-bolts BSEE for instance.

It depends upon the emulator. FWIW, I have a laptop (HP Envy 17) which has 2 drive bays. One of its drives has Linux installed on it, the other drive has VMS. Yes, VMS. It boots up with a small stub program that loads Alpha virtualization (emulation) and then, boots the VMS image. Everything is as if it was running on a *real* Alpha. I can write Alpha assembler and debug it (Symbolic debugger or DELTA or XDELTA) just like on a real Alpha. I've used this for on-the-road development as well as for presentations because it is difficult to lug an Alpha system about (no Tadpole Laptop, albeit, I would like to find one). The only drawback is that the product is licensed via a small USB-dongle depriving me of one USB port of the laptop. Alpha virtualization: http://www.vax-alpha-emulation.com/p/emulation/alpha/