[vcf-midatlantic] assembler is tedious (was WooHoo!) (Jeffrey Jonas)

[VAXman at tmesis.org]

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/