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posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:47PM
from the your-computer-is-not-a-fast-PDP-11 dept.
from the your-computer-is-not-a-fast-PDP-11 dept.
Very interesting article at the IEEE ACM by David Chisnall.
In the wake of the recent Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, it's worth spending some time looking at root causes. Both of these vulnerabilities involved processors speculatively executing instructions past some kind of access check and allowing the attacker to observe the results via a side channel. The features that led to these vulnerabilities, along with several others, were added to let C programmers continue to believe they were programming in a low-level language, when this hasn't been the case for decades.
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Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.
-- Charles Curtis, "A Commonplace Book"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:32PM (3 children)
Or I guess I should say congratulations you beat me to it.
When I got my first computer it came equipped to be programmed in a high level language (BASIC) and also through it in a low level language (binary, or hex transparently converted to binary.) Years later, when I got a PC, I learned a different high level language, assembly. And then even later, when I finally took a programming class, C and Pascal were the paradigmatic examples of high level languages. I thought it was funny as it appeared to me that languages over time had gotten *less* "high level" - BASIC certainly seems like a higher level language than C, or Pascal.
Of course since that point in time, the reverse has been the case, relatively higher level languages seem to be the trend instead. But it's all relative, because only one end of the scale is fixed. There is an absolute *lower* limit - nothing is lower than binary. But there's no upper limit. There's no clear line between extreme high level languages and simply using the computer. So what we think of as being 'high' in this context is very subjective.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 23 2018, @10:46PM (2 children)
Ah, PEEK and POKE [wikipedia.org] programming, those were the days. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday May 24 2018, @01:01AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @04:39AM
I still have a copy of the Beagle Bros Peeks, Pokes and Pointers chart around here somewhere...