Notices by Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io), page 67

FUNCTION: Lisp was ahead of its time, with first-class functions in the '60s.

My first encounter with functions was in BASIC. The Commodore dialect had built-in functions such as SIN(X), and supported a limited form of user-defined functions with a single argument and a one-line expression:

DEF FN TRIPLE(X) = X*3

Calls could nest:

PRINT FN TRIPLE(FN TRIPLE(5) + 1)

@srevinsaju #programming #retrocomputing

PROCEDURE: ALGOL 60, the precursor of all modern procedural languages, including C, introduced the concept of passing arguments to subroutines. Argument passing used the awkward "call-by-name", but the VALUE keyword let you override it. There were no pointers and no references yet.

Modern calling conventions pass the first N arguments in registers, and push the rest on the stack. This is what you'd use in your 8086 asm.

@srevinsaju #programming #asm #retrocomputing

SUBROUTINE: a routine designed to be called from multiple locations and return to the caller.

Late 1970s CPU designs supported this programming model by adding a stack pointer register (SP) and dedicated opcode pairs like JSR/RTS (m68k) and CALL/RET (x86).

@srevinsaju #programming #asm

@srevinsaju Ok, there's no official naming convention, but this is how early programming languages progressed:

ROUTINE: a block of instructions that accomplishes a task. You can JMP to it and it doesn't necessarily return (e.g.: "the init routine jumps to the loader routine, which jumps to the main screen routine...")

This is part my first open source project, a GUI tracker and module format converter.

I never managed to finish it, and now it seems silly to spend time rewriting the entire C startup code in assembly, when it's not at all performance critical.

But that's how kids learn!

@srevinsaju #programming #asm

@srevinsaju Here's some Motorola 68000 #asm I wrote long ago for the #Amiga:
https://www.codewiz.org/projects/amiga/XModule/XModuleSrc/Startup.asm

How does it look compared to 8086 asm?

@srevinsaju Looks like it's still actively developed:
https://github.com/netwide-assembler/nasm

I never used nasm because it came from the DOS/Windows world and uses the Intel syntax (as opposed to the AT&T syntax, which is standard in UNIX/Linux toolchains).

#assembly #programming #retrocomputing

How C++23 changes the way we write code
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyFVoYcaORg
#cpp #programming

@srevinsaju Now you can read the source code of LILO, a PC MBR boooader that was used by Linux distros for several years before GRUB took over:
https://github.com/iamroot-x86-10/lilo-21.4.4/blob/master/first.S

@srevinsaju Which assembler are you using? I've never seen square brackets for assembler.dorextives. The traditional UNIX as as.wellcas gas uses . to introduce directives: https://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/Manuals/gas-2.9.1/html_chapter/as_7.html

@srevinsaju I called them routines, or sometimes subroutines. Procedure is jargon from early procedural languages, such as Pascal.

@nirik I ran into this just now, as rpm refused to upgrade or *uninstall* the google-chrome-unstable package.

Fedora 38 will branch from Rawhide in about 2 weeks...

https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-38/f-38-devel-tasks.html
#fedora #linux

Huge #Fedora #Rawhide mass rebuild!

@wezm Welcome! 👋

I never heard it in real life, but sometimes anime characters with a cool personality say あざーす (azassu), an extreme contraction of ありがとうございます (arigatō gozaimasu).

It's slang, but it's supposedly still polite.

#japanese #anime

#KDE #Plasma 5.27 Beta released with tiling window management, improved multi-monitor support, #Flatpak app permission editor and more.

https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.26.90/

@benoit TIL there are also ladies-only suppositories! 🫢

Though the Brain Dance is really cool.

It's reminiscent of Inception and Source Code, but very well executed.

#cyberpunk

There's a lot of story... A LOT! But it's all cyberpunk cliché, and you can keep making progress by selecting the default answers in all conversations and walking towards the next goal marker.

You can also explore around a little bit to collect stuff, but ultimately you gotta follow the pre-baked story line.